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Food Handling Practices and Associated Factors among Food Handlers in Arba Minch Town Public Food Establishments in Gamo Gofa Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Dejene Legesse*, Marlign Tilahun, Eskezyiaw Agedew and Desta Haftu

Background: Food borne diseases are common in developing countries including Ethiopia because of the prevailing poor food handling and sanitation Practices. Food handlers play an important role in ensuring food safety throughout the chain of production, processing, storage and preparation.

Objective: To assess food handling practices and associated factors among food handlers in Arba Minch town Public food establishments in 2015.

Methods: A facility based cross sectional study was employed on 383 food handlers who work in selected 42 public food Service establishments. Data was collected from each food handler’s by direct interviewing and observation of their personal hygiene. Binary logistic regression and multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted. The strength of the association was measured by Adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence level, and pvalue <0.05 will be considered statistically significant.

Result: Among 383 respondents 125 (32.6) has good practice and 258 (67.40%) have poor practice towards food sanitation. From all interviewed food hander 150 (39.2%) were clean gown, 109 (28.5%) wear head cover, 352 (91.9%) has short finger nail and 135 (35.2%). Food hander whose age greater than 29-34 and ≥ 35 years AOR 3.457 (1.63, 7.35), 3.454 (1.78, 6.69) respectively, having supervisor AOR 13.095 (1.71, 100.49), and medical cheek up AOR 4.81 (2.16, 10.73), those who take training on food sanitation in the past 10.27 (2.34-14.78) were the identified significant factors associated with food handlers practice.

Conclusions: The current study reveals that relatively low good practice of food handling practice was observed. Relatively low practice was observed in wearing clean gown and head cover, shorting of finger nails and medical screening. Continues sanitary inspection should be performed regularly on food handler’s general personal hygiene practice and on environmental sanitation of food establishment. In addition recruiting supportive supervisor training, medical screening and cheek up is mandatory for food handlers to improve their practice in food sanitation.