Food Safety Practice and Its Associated Factors Among Food Handlers in Public Food Establishments of Godey Town, Somali Region, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Food borne illness is more common in both developed and developing country. In developing countries up to an estimated 70% of cases of diarrheal disease are associated with the Consumption of contaminated foods. Approximately 10 to 20% of food-borne disease outbreaks are due to contamination by the food handler. Nevertheless, data regarding food safety practice and associated factors in low-income countries like Ethiopia are very minimal, including the study area. The purpose of this study was to determine the magnitude of food safety practice and associated factors among food Handlers in public food establishments of Godey town, Somali region. To address the stated objective, institutional based cross sectional study design was used, on 390 food handlers working in all 109 public food establishments in Godey town. Data collection was done by four diploma nurse by using structured pretested questionnaire and institutional observation checklist. Data were entered on to Epi Data version 3.0 computer software and exported to SPSS version 20 computer software for analyzes. Accordingly, descriptive statistics was used to describe the independent variables in relation to the outcome variable. Bivariate, logistic regression analyses were done to see the association between each independent variable and the outcome variable. All variables with p-value <0.25 during bivariate were entered in to multiple logistic regression models to control for all possible confounders and to identify factors associated with the outcome variable. Odds ratio along with 95% CI were estimated to measure the strength of the association. Finally, level of statistical significant was declared at p-value <0.05. As a result, the study has revealed that the prevalence of satisfactory food safety practice of food handlers was 20.9% [95% CI: 16.7, 24.8]. In multivariable logistic regression analysis having knowledge about food safety [AOR= 10.4, 95%CI: (4.6, 23.81)], presence of hand washing facility for food handlers [AOR=6.5, 95%CI: (2.7, 15, 3)] and presence of supervision [AOR=3.08, 95%CI: (1.3, 7.12)] were statistically significant factors associated with food safety practice. Along with this, the prevalence of satisfactory food safety practice among food handlers was low in this study, knowledge about food safety, hand washing facility, and supervision were factors associated with food safety practice. Thus, strong supportive supervision, awareness on knowledge of food handlers on food safety practice and maintaining and establishing hand washing facility in kitchen area have to be done to solve the problem.

Keywords: Ethiopia, food handlers, food safety practice, Godey, Somali

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-7-03

Publication date: April 30^th 2021