Journal of the Dow University of Health Sciences (Sep 2015)
Oral Health Knowledge and Oral Hygiene Practices among Private and Public School Teachers of Karachi City
Abstract
Background: Oral health education and promotion at the level of school is considered as priority for schoolchildrensince primary level of learning begins from school. Furthermore, school-teachers serve as an institutionfor motivating their school-children on daily basis to achieve healthy principles of living. In addition, it hasalso been suggested that spreading oral health awareness by approaching school-teachers have shown to becost effective and practical policy. Objective: To determine school-teacher's oral health knowledge and oral hygiene practices among privateand public schools of Karachi city. Methodlogy: A cross sectional study of 165 school-teachers, were conducted among nine different townsof Karachi city. At the first stage, nine towns out of eighteen towns were selected randomly through clustersampling. In the next stage, from each selected town one private and one public school were identifiedrandomly. Selection of school-teachers were performed through non probability convenience sampling. Afterselection subjects were requested to fill a validated self reported structured close ended questionnaire relatedto their oral health knowledge and oral hygiene practices. Results: Regarding oral health knowledge and oral hygiene practices, the mean scores of oral health knowledgein between public and private school-teachers (Mean difference = -2.2, 95% CI -2.45- -1.95) and was statisticallysignificant (p=0.00) whereas, the mean scores of oral hygiene practices in between them (Mean difference= -0.64, 95% CI -0.78- -0.49) was statistically significant (p=0.00). Furthermore, overall scores of schoolteacher's(n=165) oral health knowledge and oral hygiene practices were found to be inadequate followed bypoor practices. Conclusion: The conclusion drawn from the study were that school-teacher's oral health knowledge and oralhygiene practices were also found to be inadequate and poor. Hence, there is an urgent need for training andmotivation of school-teacher's concerning oral health education and promotion through school based communityoutreach programs.