The effectiveness of school educating program for betel quid chewing: A pilot study in Papua New Guinea

To investigate the effectiveness of educating program among primary and secondary school students in Papua New Guinea, where has the highest incidence of oral cancer all over the world.

A cross-sectional school based survey was arranged in primary and secondary school in Papua New Guinea in June, 2015. A self-administrated questionnaire was administered before and after education done by health experts from Taiwan. The subjects were chosen by random. The schools provided the students we educated and did the questionnaires on.

Ninety five primary school students and 55 secondary school students in Papua New Guinea participated in the study. Before education, both groups lacked the knowledge that betel quid is harmful to health and had no motivation to quit betel quid consumption with the average score 4.580 out of the total score of 8 for primary school students, and the average score of 4.600 out of the total score of 8 for secondary school students. After education, improvements were noted in knowledge of betel quid among both groups, and reached the statistical significance for secondary school students (mean difference 0.700 ± 0.277, 95% CI 0.164-1.248, p-value = 0.018).

A great achievement was gained by a short time of education. To prevent the incidence and mortality of oral cancer in Papua New Guinea, education programs should be arranged aggressively and effectively.