A Study of impact of Education on Awareness, Personal Hygiene and Practices of food handlers of a Tertiary Care Hospital in Kashmir, India

Background Each year 9.4 million people suffer from food borne diseases throughout the world; everyday cases related to food borne diseases are recorded in all countries from the most to the least developed ones. A major risk of food contamination lies with the food handlers.Several food borne disease outbreaks have been reported to have been associated with poor personal hygiene of people handling food stuffs. Method A questionnaire was structured for the purpose of data collection to find out effect of educational background on personal hygiene, awareness regarding transmission of food borne infections and routine practices among food handler of the food establishments of a super speciality teaching hospital of Kashmir. Results Out of 121 respondents (33.05 percent cooks, 42.97 percent stewards and 23.97 percent dishwashers), 90.90 percent were males and 9.10 percent females. Majority (90.90 percent) have educational background below high school level (group B) and the rest (9.10%) have education above 10th standard (group A). Soap was used by majority(90.9%) of group A in comparison to group B(59.1%) before entering kitchen.72.7% of group A employees change their shoes and use kitchen slippers in the kitchen, whereas only 31.8% of group B employees do so and the rest(68.2%) do not change the foot wear before entering the kitchen.While 81.8% of group A employees responded that diarrhoeal diseases spread by contaminated food,majority of group B(62.7%) responded other reasons.81.8% of group A feel it necessary to chlorinate or filter visibly clean water, whereas only 52.7% of group B feel so. Conclusion Food handlers of any food establishment, in particular hospital kitchen should have high standard of educational background to have enough awareness regarding food borne diseases and importance of personal hygiene to prevent transmission of diseases. Because of poor educational background, the food handlers in our study didn’t know the importance of use of soap & therefore despite availability of soap in washrooms, 59.1% of group B employees wash their hands with plain water before commencing their work. Lack of awareness of transmission of food borne infections & personal hygiene are secondary to lack of knowledge due poor education