Magnitude of dental caries and its associated factors among governmental primary school children in Debre Berhan town, Ethiopia

Abstract Background: Globally, it estimated that 2.4 billion people suffer from caries of permanent teeth and 486 million children suffer from caries of primary teeth. It has detrimental consequences on children’s quality of life by inflicting pain, premature tooth-loss, and malnutrition and finally influences overall growth and development. In Ethiopia, oral health prevention and treatment gets low attention in the government and the existing dental services are private owned and expensive. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of dental caries and its associated factors among governmental primary school children in Debreberhan town, Ethiopia, 2019. Method- An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted from January 30– February 14/2019. A total of 417 primary school children was select using computer generated simple random sampling and interviewed using structured and pretested questionnaires. Data was coded, entered and cleaned using epi-data version 3.1 and export to SPSS version 22 for analysis. Descriptive statistics, and binary logistic regression analysis was employed to test the association between dependent and independent variables. P-value less than 0.05 was taken as significant association. Finally, the result of this study was present by text, table and graph. Result: Out of the 396 study participants, 135 (34.1%) had dental carries. Of these, more than half, 95(59.37%) had pre-molar decayed. Two hundred eighty-five (72.0%) of them were cleaned their teeth. Independent predictor of dental caries were drinking sugared tea [AOR= 2.034, 95%CI: (1.223-3.385)], and food particle on their teeth [AOR= 6.709, 95% CI: (3.475- 12.954)], had shown significant association with dental caries. Conclusion: The over magnitude of dental caries was 34.1%, which is relatively high and found to be a public health problem. Drank sugar tea, presence of food particle or dental plaque were significantly associated with dental caries. In contrast, merchant occupation, was reduced the chance of dental caries. Give health education to minimize drank sugar tea and clean their teeth after consumption of sugar tea could be emphasize