Abstract

To examine the relationship between DMFT and OHI-S among children attending the Local Education Agency (LEA) schools in Gwarinpa, Abuja.
This is a descriptive cross-sectional survey of 270 pupils from the six primary Schools in Gwarinpa present at the 2019 National children’s day celebration organized by a non-governmental organization (NGO), “Eat Right Society of Nigeria”. Interviewer administered questionnaire was used to obtain socio-demographic data from the pupils and oral examination with children seated in an upright position under natural light was done by another NGO “Early 5years of Life International Initiative” (Abuja5). Collected data were tested statistically using SPSS software (ver.20.0; IBM, Chicago, IL, USA).
The study population is made up of 44.1% males and 55.9% females, between 4 - 20 years of age with mean age (± SD) at 11.42 ± 2.6. Prevalence of tooth decay in children reported in this study was 11.9% with mean DMFT = 0.124 ± 0.5. Females had less tooth decay (11.3%) and statistical significantly better oral hygiene (70.2%) than males (47.9%).
There was no statistically significant difference between gender and DMFT; however, females had less decayed teeth with a significantly higher percentage of good oral hygiene compared to their male counterpart.
From this study, a clear relationship between DMFT and OHI-S exist among the pupils of six primary schools in Gwarinpa, Abuja. More oral health campaigns should be done to create oral health awareness among children. In addition, free oral health care for children should be prioritized by the Federal Government of Nigeria and implemented to local government level. School oral health visits by Dentist should be initiated by the Federal Ministry of health in collaboration with Non-governmental organizations.

Keywords: Awareness; DMFT; OHI-S

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Citation

Citation: Nathan U Ikimi., et al. “DMFT Index and OHI-S in Children Attending Public Schools in Abuja, Nigeria". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 4.5 (2020): 09-13.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Nathan U Ikimi., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.