Oral health related behaviour, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs among secondary school students in Iringa Municipality

OBJECTIVES To determine oral health related behavior, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs among secondary school students in Iringa municipality. DESIGN Cross-sectional descriptive study. RESULTS All participants reported to brush their teeth at least once a day, only 24% brush twice a day. The use of plastic tooth brush was reported to be 97.1%. 72.7% of participants who reported to know about dental checkup and 84.6%, recommended the interval of dental check ups to be between one to six months. About 58.6% reported to experience dental problems and the tooth ache was the most problem experienced (33.6%), tooth decay was 20.1% and (17.4%) experienced bleeding gum. The attitude towards dental health problems was found to be positive and girls had more positive attitude than boys. In measuring beliefs on dental treatment, the majority held positive beliefs with no difference between boys and girls. CONCLUSION The fi ndings of this study have shown that the participants had conducive oral health behavior, suffi cient knowledge, positive attitude and held positive beliefs regarding dental treatments