Prevalence of Cigarette Smoking and Factors Associated with it Among Undergraduate Students of Jigjiga University

Abstract

Cigarette smoking is one of the public health problems which killed about 100 million people in the 20th century and supposed to kill about one billion people in the 21st century if the pattern of its consumption continues. Currently the prevalence of smoking is increasing at the global level and highly associated with increased rate of mortality and morbidity. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of smoking and its associated factors among undergraduate students of Jigjiga University. A descriptive institutional based cross sectional study design was employed on 648 students. Self-administered structured questionnaire which was adopted and developed from different previously conducted studies was used to collect data. Data were entered using epi data 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 16.0 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics were done in the form of graphs and tables to summarize data. Data were analysed through univariate for frequencies, and percentage; bivariate analysis to see association between dependent and independent variables and logistic regression to see the independent effect of selected variables on the status of substance using odds ratio. From the total study participants 87 (14.5%) of them smokes and 32 (36.8%) of them smokes greater 12 than cigarettes per week. students at 3 rd year of study were at higher chance of smoking cigarette, AOR=17.89 (95% CI=5.21, 61.42), and the odds of smoking cigarette was higher among year 4 and above students comparing with those at year 2, AOR=30.08 (95% CI=6.56, 137.21). Similarly students who chew khat were about 27 times likely to smoke, AOR 27.23 (95% CI=9.47, 78.31) compared with those who didn't chew khat. Generally the prevalence of smoking among undergraduate Jigjiga university students was 14.5%. Student's cigarette smoking was significantly associated to year of study; students ever khat chewing habit, ever drinking alcohol and ever drug use.