Personal Hygiene Practices of Day Laborer during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background: Personal hygiene is deemed a necessary precautionary measure against different communicable diseases. Its importance is further reiterated during the current COVID-19 global pandemic. Method: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 309 day-laborer using convenient sampling technique. The study was conducted from 1st January 2021 to 31st December 2021. An interviewer-guided semi structured questionnaire with questions on knowledge, practices and barriers to personal hygiene was used in data collection. The chi-squire test was applied to evaluate the correlations among the respondents between knowledge and practices. A 95% confidence interval was used and statistical significance was P<0.001. Result: Research findings showed that most the respondents had good knowledge regarding COVID-19 in term source, transmission, wearing mask, hand wash, social distance, coughing etiquette, avoiding touching of face and nose. Additionally, most of the respondents having moderate practices on personal hygiene during COVID-19 was 58.9%. Furthermore, most of the respondents were wear face mask while going to outside or meet with someone. Only 1.9% respondents wearing mask all time. 83.8% noted lack of soap and water in their workplace as a barrier to maintain personal hygiene. Conclusion: The study revealed that overall maximum proportion of respondents with good knowledge but having moderate practices with some barrier. Findings indicates there is need for optimizing personal hygiene practices through the addressing barriers and promoting public health education.