Hygiene Practices Among Food Vendors in Hohoe Township

Abstract

Background: Street food vending has become a very lucrative business across all parts of the globe. However, little attention has been given to the safety of such foods thus, becoming a great challenge to public health. This study was conducted to examine the hygiene practices observe by food vendors at sites where food is prepared and sold in the Hohoe Township. Method: This was a cross-sectional study which employed simple random sampling technique to select 187 respondents over the period of July to December, 2015. Chi square test was used to test for association between some selected variables at a significant level of 0.05. Data was entered into epi data version 3.1 and exported to Stata version 11 for analysis. Result: Of the 187 respondents, majority of 181(96.79%) were female with 113(60.43%) attaining the basic school education. About 35(18.7%) used their bare hands in picking food for customers with 149(78.92%) been medically screened. A little more than half (55.08%) did not cover their hair when selling and only 72(38.50%) wore apron during sales of food. One hundred and sixty (86.89%) sold food very close to open gutters but only 29(27.36%) paid attention to the cleanliness of such gutters. An association existed between level of education and knowledge on hygiene practices among respondents but was not significant [Chi square=1.3024, p value=0.729]. Also, an association existed between type of food vendor and knowledge on hygiene but not significant [Chi square=2.8331, p value=0.418]. Conclusion: Most food vendors in Hohoe have some fundamental knowledge on hygiene but this does not reflect in their routine practices. Periodic training and education of food vendors on hygiene and its standards can help ameliorate their practice on food hygiene.