Awareness of health risks associated with body piercing and tattooing among tertiary students in Auchi, Edo state, Nigeria

Recently, there has been a widespread practice of tattooing and body piercing among youths despite the increased number of potential complications associated to the practice. This study aims to assess the awareness of health risk associated with body piercing and tattooing in Federal Polytechnic Auchi, Edo state. A descriptive survey design was used among 324 undergraduate students. A self structured questionnaire was used as instrument of data collection with a reliability of 0.89. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and hypotheses were tested with Chi-square and T-test at 0.05 significant level. Findings from the study show that only 92(28.4%) of the respondents had good knowledge of body piercing and tattooing, 164(50.6%) had average knowledge while 68(21.0%) had poor knowledge of body piercing and tattooing. There was lack of awareness on the health risk associated with body piercing and tattooing among the respondents generally (grand mean 2.45). Negative attitude towards body piercing and tattooing (grand mean of 2.45), was found, which translated into poor practice of body piercing and tattoo as only 73 (22.5%) of the respondents do have tattoo on. There were no significant relationship between knowledge and practice of body piercing and tattooing among the respondents (p= 0.201 > 0.05). Significant difference in the knowledge of body piercing and tattooing among male and female students (p = 0.010) was found. It is therefore recommended that the federal ministry of health should issue safe practice guidelines that apply to tattoo and piercing facilities and be made to strictly adhere to such guidelines. Also, seminars and workshops should be organized to educate students (youths) on the health risks associated with body piercing and tattooing.Keywords: Body piercing, Tattoo, health risks, knowledge of body piercing, attitude, practic