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Objective:
Oral health diseases are detrimental to the quality of life and can have impact on self-esteem, eating
ability, nutrition and health of an individual. Oral health of an individual depends on awareness and
attitude, children with inadequate oral health knowledge and awareness is more likely to have oral
disease. Therefore objective of this study was to evaluate the oral health awareness and practices of
school children in Bhaktapur.
Materials and methods:
310 school children were randomly selected from schools in Bhaktapur, between the ages 4 to 14 years.
For the children below the age of 11, questions were asked by the dentist and answers were marked
according to the answers given by the students after hearing the choices from the questionnaire.
School children above the age of 11, filled the questionnaire themselves.
Result
Results showed that all the school children selected were using tooth brush and tooth paste to clean
their teeth. 66% of the students were brushing once daily and only 34% of students were brushing
twice a day. Our study also revealed that 73% children were brushing only in the morning before meal
whereas only 27% students were brushing after meal in the night. Only 54% of students were rinsing
always after meal whereas 9% never rinsed their mouth after meal. This shows that children were not
aware that they should be brushing their teeth twice a day after meal and rinse their mouth after every
meal. Our study also showed that most of the students were not aware of interdental cleaning tools
like dental floss and interdental brush, 41% of students were unaware when the tooth brush had to be
changed and only 44% students had previous dental visit whereas 54% of students never visited any
a dentist before.. It was also seen that 67% students were using horizontal brushing strokes and only
21% were using vertical strokes and 12% were using circular strokes
Conclusion
School health awareness program is the first and most important step in preventing oral disease and
it should start from Preschools so that this habit is incorporated from childhood into an individual.
Not only school children; parents, teachers, care takers must also be made aware so that this habit is
continued and reinforced every day.

Bass technique, oral health, tooth brush