DISSERTATION WORK MSAFIRI KABULWA.pdf

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smoked (4.4%) indicate that smoking cigarettes is practiced by some of the secondary school
students. The reported prevalence of ever smoked (4.4%) in the current study is higher than
that reported by Kaaya et al 1991 (1.0%) but similar to the reported prevalence of 5.9% by
Kaduri et al (2008). These findings indicate an upward trend of smoking habit among
adolescents in Dar es Salaam. The proportion of students who have ever smoked cigarettes in
the present study is lower than that reported in Kenya, Uganda and Ivory Coast where the
prevalence were 31.0%, 17.5% and 15.3% respectively (Ogwell et al 2003, Mpabulungi and
Muula 2004, Siziya et al 2007c).
The prevalence of 2.2% for students who ever dipped and 4.4% for students who ever chewed
or smoked is not to be ignored first because these percentages would translate to big numbers
given the fact that there were 157764 ordinary level secondary school students in Dar es
Salaam at the time of the study. Secondly these students are likely to influence others to dip,
chew or smoke tobacco (Kwamanga et al 2003, Islam and Johnson 2005, Siziya et al 2007b,
Rudatsikira et al 2007, Muula et al 2008, Odeyemi et al 2009). Thirdly they have an increased
risk of about 4 times of developing oral cancer and periodontal disease (Blot et al 1988, Tomar
and Asma 2000). Therefore intervention against this habit at an early age is essential to prevent
the potential of influencing others to start smoking and to reduce the risk of acquiring oral
cancer and periodontal disease.
9.2 Knowledge on detrimental effects of tobacco use on health
Majority of students who participated in this study (96.8%) were knowledgeable on the
relationship between smoking cigarettes as cause of systemic diseases. This is encouraging
because knowledge of detrimental effects of tobacco use has been shown to be a deterrent for
tobacco use (Nourjal et al 1994). Therefore, this higher level of knowledge on adverse effects
of cigarettes smoking on systemic diseases may be one of the reasons for low prevalence of
tobacco use in the current study.
The findings of the present study are similar to that reported in the United States (Siahpush et
al 2006), Great Britain (Terrades et al 2009) and Australia (Rikard-Bell et al 2003) among
adults where the proportion of respondents knowledgeable on cigarettes smoking as cause of