Abstract
BackgroundMorbidity and mortality rates of food borne diseases are consistently highest in African due to poor food handling and sanitation practices. Thus, the study aimed to assess food handling practice and associated factors among food handlers of Restaurants in Bahir Dar Town, northwest, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study was conducted from December, 7/2012 to January, 2/2013 among food handlers working in 106 restaurants in Bahir Dar Town. A structured questionnaire composed of socio-demographic factors, food safety knowledge, working environmental characteristics and food hygiene practice of food handlers was employed to collect the data via interviewing and observations. Binary logistic regression model was fitted to assess factors associated with food hygiene practice after multi-collinearity and outlier were checked and data was clean. Both crude odds ratio (COR) and adjusted odds ratio (AOR) were estimated to show the strength of association. In multivariate analysis, variables with a P value of ≤ 0.05 were considered as statistical significant.ResultsAbout 67.6% [95% confidence interval (CI) 58.8, 76.4] of food handlers had good food hygiene practice, whereas 32.4% of food handlers had poor food hygiene practice. The odds of having good food hygiene practice was higher among food handlers who had received food safety training [AOR: 4.7, 95% CI 1.7, 12.8], had formal education [AOR: 6.4, 95% CI 3.5, 11.5] and work experiences greater than 2 years [AOR: 3.4, 95% CI 1.8, 6.4]. At last, food handlers working in restaurants which had piped fountains for hand wash were 2.1 times more likely to have good food hygiene practice[AOR: 2.1, 95% CI 1.1, 3.8].ConclusionIn this study, the overall food hygiene practice of food handlers is not to the acceptable level. Therefore, endeavors ought to be reinforced to improve food hygiene practices of food handlers through intervention programs such as training and education. Also emphasis should be given on the accessibility of piped fountains for the better food handling practice of food handlers.
Highlights
Morbidity and mortality rates of food borne diseases are consistently highest in African due to poor food handling and sanitation practices
Poor food handling and sanitation practices, inadequate food safety laws, weak regulatory systems, lack of financial resources to invest on safety equipments and poor literacy status of foodhandlers are some of the attributors augmenting the adverse consequences of food born disease [1, 3,4,5]
Different factors associated with the level of food hygiene practice among food handlers have been identified in different study settings
Summary
Morbidity and mortality rates of food borne diseases are consistently highest in African due to poor food handling and sanitation practices. 10–20% of food-borne diseases are due to contamination of food by food handlers [8] This is mainly due to poor hygienic status of food handlers, improper cooking procedures and unsafe storage and handling of food and equipments, which paves the way for pathogens to come into contact with food and cause illness in consumers [9,10,11,12]. Cognizant of these problems, the World Health Organization (WHO) established five keys to safer food manual to educate food handlers about their responsibilities for food safety [10]. The environmental factors, such as toilet facility, liquid and solid waste management, water supply, and infestation of vectors are found related to the level of food hygienic practice of food handlers [15, 19]
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