Causes and Effects of Halitosis Among Secondary Students in Ijero Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria

Abstract

Halitosis or mostly commonly bad breath is term used to describe noticeably unpleasant breathing. Halitosis can be important social problem. The standard dental treatment and mouth wash that are often recommended provide only temporarily relief the smell emanating from the mouth. The objectives of this research are to identify the causes of halitosis among secondary student in Ijero Ekiti local government area of Ekiti state, Nigeria and to find out the Effects of halitosis among secondary student in the study area. The study area is Secondary schools in Ijero Ekiti. There are two major secondary schools which are Doherty memorial grammar school and Ijero High School. Students at Mercy Model Private School were excluded from this study as the researcher focused on public secondary school because of prevailing factors. Two public schools were selected for this study namely, Doherty memorial grammar school and Ijero High School. The population of the study area is 2900 for Ijero High School while 3200 for Doherty Memorial grammar school which gave us a total of 6100 students as at the time of this research work. Author used stratified sampling technique where in the population was divided in to two strata [Junior and senior category], where in 25 students were randomly selected from the junior category in each school. Hence, a total of 100 respondents were drawn for the study. Questionnaire was adopted as the instrument for data collection, the instrument was tested through a pilot study with result at 0.91. Results were analyzed using simple percentage, graphs and tables.