SANITARY FOOD HANDLING PRACTICE AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG FOOD HANDLERS IN LICENSED PUBLIC FOOD ESTABLISHMENT IN TOWNS OF KOKKOSSA DISTRICT, OROMIA REGION, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Safe food handling practice is an increasingly important public health issue to prevent food borne illnesses.Food can be contaminated from production up to consumption. Producers, shippers, processors, distributers and food handlers have the responsibility in ensuring the safety of food.Unhygienic food handling practice is critical issue in causing foodborne illness and more prevalent in both developing and developed countries. Its effect in terms of human life and suffering is enormous. Thousands millions of people fall ill and may die as a result of eating unsafe food. As far as the principal investigator`s knowledge is concerned there is no similar study conducted on status of sanitary food handling practice and associated factors among food handlers in licensed public food establishment in towns of Kokkossa districts and also there has not yet been known information about the current status of sanitary food handling practice in licensed public food establishment in a study area. Objective: To assess status of sanitary food handling practice and associated factors among food handlers in licensed public food establishment in towns of Kokkossa District, Oromia region, Southern Ethiopia from March 15 to April 15, 2020. Methods: Facility based cross-sectional study design was used. A total of 422 food handlers were selected using stratified random sampling with proportional allocation to size of the establishments. A pre-tested and structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data were entered and cleaned using Epi Data Version 3.1. Bi-variates and multivariate data analysis was performed using SPSS version 20.0 software. All covariates that are significant at p-value < 0.25 in bivariate analysis were considered for multivariate analysis to control all possible confounders. The level of statistical significance was declared at p-value less than 0.05.Results. Abouta total of 415 food handlers have participated in the study with response rate of 98.3%. Of these 191[46% 95%CI (41.2%, 50.8%)] had good sanitary food handling practice. An educational status of food handlers (AOR= 3.28, 95% CI 1.36, 7.93), knowledge on sanitary food handling (AOR= 1.59, 95% CI 1.04, 2.4), work experience in public food establishment (AOR= 1.66, 95% CI 1.07, 2.56) and availability of trained manager (AOR = 4.40, CI 1.24, 15.07) were factors statistically associated with good sanitary food handling practice. xiii Conclusion. More than half of the food handlers had no sanitary food handling practice in the study area. Low practices are observed in utilization of refrigerator, wearing clean gown, wearing of ring/ jewelry, hair cover, training of food handlers, availability of trained manager and shower facility.Ongoing sanitary inspection should be performed regularly on food handler’s general personal hygiene, safe food handling practice and on environmental sanitation of food establishment.