Oral Health Control Card As A Dental Caries Prevention In Children In The New Normal Era At SD Negeri 2 Baumata Timur, Kupang Regency

Abstract

The tooth brushing habit of the Indonesian people is still a cause for concern, as can be seen from the 2018 Basic Health Research data where only 2.3% of the population aged ≥ 10 years brush their teeth after breakfast and before going to bed at night. This condition can cause tooth decay, as seen from the Riskesdas data, where the tooth decay index (DMF-T) of the Indonesian population is 4.6, which means that every Indonesian resident having about 4-5 carious teeth. The high rate of dental caries is supported by the fact that the level of knowledge of Indonesian people about the importance of brushing their teeth properly is very low. The dental health control card is a tool for monitoring children's activities or their behavior every day in the routine tooth brushing in the morning after breakfast and at night before going to bed. This effort is expected to increase children's obedience in carrying out prevention efforts independently so that caries can be prevented. This study aimsto determine the effect of oral health control cards as an effort to prevent dental caries in children in the new normal era at SD Negeri 2 Baumata Timur, Kupang Regency. This is an experiment with a one shot case study design, without a control group which was conducted on all 126 students of SDN 2 Baumata Timur.The results showed that the students’s behavior in tooth brushing consistently at home in the morning after breakfast and at night before going to bed by using an oral health control card for 90 days as a monitoring tool, can prevent the risk of dental caries in children with the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. The test shows a significant value of p 1.000 > 0.05 . There is no difference before and after treatment, this shows that statistically there is no difference between before and after the intervention, but in substance, the use of dental and oral health control cards has an effect on preventing dental caries if the action of brushing teeth is carried out regularly, namely in the morning after eating and the night before bed. The conclusions are the tooth brushing habit in the morning after breakfast and at night before going to bed if consistently done can prevent the risk of dental caries in children. It is recommended to have an education about the importance of consistency in brushing teeth for school-age children.