Madam, poor oral health is detrimental to quality of life,
and imperils general health.1 Regular brushing of teeth is
an effective way of ensuring good dental health.2 Poor
dental hygiene has been reported to be associated with
substance use, gender, poverty, and age.3,4 To describe
these factors' association with self-reported oral hygiene
behaviour in the past 30 days in Pakistani students of class
8-10 and its prevalence; I used data from the two-stage
cluster sample-based nationally representative Global
School-Based Health Survey (GSHS) for Pakistan,
conducted by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with
the World Health Organization and Centers of Disease
Control and Prevention, United States, in 2009.5 Designbased
analysis using STATA-12 was done using bivariate
analysis and multivariate logistic regression; factors found
statistically significant at p<0.10 level on simple logistic
regression were used for multiple logistic regression.
Responses to GSHS question "During the past 30 days,
how many times per day did you usually clean or brush
your teeth?" were used to determine dental hygiene
status. Poor dental hygiene was defined as either not
cleaning or brushing teeth or doing it less than once per
day in the past 30 days.
The overall prevalence of poor dental hygiene was 16.4%
[95% confidence interval (CI): 12.6%, 20.2%] (n = 5165). In
male students the prevalence was 22.4% (95% CI: 17.7%,
27.0%), while among females the prevalence was 7.1%
(95% CI: 4.6%, 9.6%).