. Sudip Bhattacharya; . Shweta Talati; . Anil Kumar Gupta; . Sunita Malhotra; . Amarjeet Singh
Volume 9, Issue 7 , July 2019, , Pages 1-8
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Food handlers with poor personal hygiene and lack of awareness in preventingfoodborne diseases working in hospitality sectors or hospitals could spread foodborne infections.OBJECTIVE: ...
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INTRODUCTION: Food handlers with poor personal hygiene and lack of awareness in preventingfoodborne diseases working in hospitality sectors or hospitals could spread foodborne infections.OBJECTIVE: Our study objective was to ascertain the impact of a video‑based educationalintervention program and administrative measures on improvement in personal hygiene of foodhandlers in hospital.METHODOLOGY: We conducted this pilot study among all 103 food handlers who were working ina tertiary care hospital. A checklist‑based scoring and physical examination were conducted by theinvestigator for the food handlers. After baseline scoring S1, intervention 1 and 2 was implemented,and score was obtained as S2 and S3, respectively. Descriptive statistics was calculated, and scorewas compared by repeated measures ANOVA test using SPSS‑22 software.RESULTS: Our study revealed that a total of 19.2% of food handlers had health complaints. More thanhalf (54.8%) admitted that they had suffered from any kind of illness since last 6 months. Common illnesswas viral fever (40.3%) followed by typhoid (5.7%), dengue (4.8%) and urinary tract infection (3.8%).Most of the food handlers had long hair (62.5%) followed by long nail (57.69%). Nearly, one‑fifth (20.1%)of food handlers nail was infected with fungus. Worm was found in 14.4% cases by stool examination.Statistically significant (P < 0.05) improvement in score was observed after each intervention.DISCUSSION: Poor hygiene (Score‑1 = 23.76) was observed at baseline study although therewas a mechanism in place for a yearly health checkup and regular (6 monthly) hygiene training.After interventions (video‑based training and administrative measures), the score was improved toScore‑3 (42.57). Statistically significant(P< 0.05) differences in hygiene score were observed for variablessuch as state of residence, education level, and working experiences (inside or outside the hospital).CONCLUSION: It is possible to improve personal hygiene among food handlers using video‑basedinteractive training methods and administrative measures with no extra or minimal cost.RECOMMENDATIONS: This “piggyback” approach of training can be imparted in addition to routinetraining measures among the food handlers for improving their personal hygiene in the hospital setting.
