[Oral Health attitude and Practices among children in boys' orphanage of Rabat, Morocco].

Abstract

Introduction: Orphanages are a high-risk group of oral health diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate oral hygiene attitudes among orphans living in Al Akkari orphanage in Rabat, Morocco.

Materials and methods: cross sectional study was conducted among 165 orphans aged between 6 and 15 years-old at the orphanage Al Akkari in Rabat, between December 2012 and February 2013. The information collect was realized by direct questioning of all the residents. The questions were asked by a dentist and concerned the attitudes of the residents towards principles of oral hygiene, the possession of toothbrush and dentifrice, tooth brushing frequency and methods and the existence or not of a previous oral hygiene instruction was also reported. Seizure and statistical analysis was performed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 13.0 software.

Results: The results showed that 94.5 % of the orphans' children have a toothbrush and 90.2% among them have toothpaste. 98.2% of residents brushed their teeth and 83.3% of those who brushed their teeth do it regularly (daily). 49.4% of the orphans' children brushed their teeth vertically while 88.5% of them had already oral hygiene instructions.

Discussion: Attitudes of resident concerning tooth brushing regularity and the used method remains largely insufficient even if the orphans were informed of the importance of oral hygiene.