Effectiveness of Awareness Program on the Etiology of Earlychildhood Caries Among the Multidisciplinary Caregivers of Children in Sullia.

Abstract

Introduction: Early childhood caries is one of the most prevalent, infectious, biolm-mediated, and transmissible childhood diseases with longterm progression and developmental implications that affect children worldwide. also Also known as baby bottle caries, baby bottle tooth decay, nursing bottle caries, nursing caries or rampant caries. , describes dental caries affecting children aged 0–71 months. For an effective prevention of early childhood caries, conducting a caries risk assessment and providing parental education within 6 months (but no longer than 12 months) of the child's rst tooth eruption is recommended and the theme of this project was to form a multidisciplinary team collaboration and create awareness to work in collaboration to prevent early childhood caries. Methods:All the multiple stakeholders in the care giving of infants and toddlers children are were involved in this awareness program, . . questionnaires Questionnaires relevant to the awareness were customized after validation to include all the proven etiologic factors that are proven to be etiologic to for early childhood caries in children. A total of 300 participants including mothers of infants, dental and medical students, gynecologist, pediatricians, pedodontist and asha ASHA workers were all evaluated assessed for awareness of etiologic factors and they were then educated with powerpoint presentations and video presentations on the etiologic factors and how to prevent early childhood caries. The post lecture sensitization was evaluated & compared by the post session questionnaires.Post test questionnaire was used to assess effectiveness of intervention. Results: A statistically signicant improvement (p < 0.05) was observed in the post awareness test scores for knowledge, attitude& practices of participantsthan the pre awareness test score. Compared to the pre awareness group results 75 (25%) there was signicant improvement in the post awareness group 269 (89.7%) was noted.The overall distribution of the post awareness session excellentscores were 89.7% and results were statistically signicant. Conclusion: Awareness is he mainstay in prevention of any diseases and early childhood caries being one of the devastating diseases that burdens the child and the parents physically, mentally, semotionally and nancially along with tooth pain, dental abscess, cellulitis and tooth loss leading to psychological impact ,speech disorders and spread of dental cries to permanent tooth needs to be stopped. As prevention is better than cure this kind of workshopscomprehensive interventetnions like these involving all the stakeholders of a child health will denitely empower them with more knowledge and skill to educate the mother and child to take precautions to prevent the diseases like early childhood caries.