Personal hygiene practice and associated factors among elementary school students in Fiche Town, Oromia, Ethiopia | BMC Infectious Diseases

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Personal hygiene practice and associated factors among elementary school students in Fiche Town, Oromia, Ethiopia | BMC Infectious Diseases

This study was conducted to determine personal hygiene practices and their associated factors among elementary school (grades 5–8) students. It revealed that, more than half of the students had a good overall personal hygiene (PH), hand washing (HW), latrine use (LU), and oral hygiene (OH) practices. Personal hygiene knowledge, hygiene inspection in school, and being a female student were significantly associated with personal hygiene practice.

The magnitude of overall good PH was 59.2%, which was higher than the findings of a similar study reported from Mareko District [6]. This discrepancy could be due to the level of knowledge of children about personal hygiene and the fact that the residence of the previous study was only in town. However, in the current study, the students resided in both urban, semi-urban, and rural areas, which could have an effect on personal hygiene practices. In contrast, the results of the current study are similar to those of the previously reported studies [13]. In the present study, the overall personal hygiene knowledge of students was half, which was higher than the survey study reported by rural students from China [14]. This difference may be due to the setting of the study. In the current study, the students were residents of mixed setups, while the participants in the study reported from China were purely rural residents [14].

In the current study area, all elementary schools had toilets, compared with the national minister of education’s report (2017) that 76% of schools in Ethiopia have latrines [15]. In the current study area, all elementary schools had toilets, compared with the national minister of education’s report (2017) that 76% of schools in Ethiopia have latrines [15]. In the present study, good LU practice was found to be 62.5%. This finding was higher than the findings of a previous study reported from Mareko District, in which 46% of students practice LU [6]. Moreover, the present study result on latrine use practice was higher than the previous study reported from Chencha District (33.3%) [16] and Sigmo (39%) [17]. The availability of separate toilets by sex (48.0%) and toilet privacy (30.8%) were the main motivators that encouraged students to use the toilet in the present study. This result is in agreement with to the study reported by Mareko 50% [6]. The result shows that the students stated that 33.1% of the school latrines were inaccessible to students irrespective of their physical disabilities, and 66.9% of the school children stated latrines were not accessible to younger students. This could be due to the design problem (21.8%), the distance from the rooms (12.6%), or the fact that 222 (62.2%) had no reason.

In the current study, hand-washing facilities near the toilet were 38.4% higher compared to the national minister of education’s report of 4.4%. This might be due to the fact that the study area is smaller than the national survey. Good hand washing practice among elementary school children in Fiche town was found to be 59.6%. This is very high compared with a study in Mareko (23%) [6], Yirgalem Town (39.1%) [7], Debark Town (52.2%) [18], Arba Minch Town (22.3%) [19], and Sebeta Town (32%) [20]. This could be due to the availability of sanitation facilities in the study areas. However, the present study result is similar to a study reported from India (60%) [21]. More than half (59.7%) of the students were always washing their hands with soap or ash at critical times. This result was lower than the results reported in studies conducted in Yirgalem town (88.2%) [7], Bangladesh (71.6%) [22], and the United Arab Emirate (71%) [23]. However, the present study result is higher than the studies reported from Mareko (26.8%) [6] and India (29.1%) [24]. This difference is most probably due to the difference in the knowledge level of the students about hand washing.

Two-thirds of the students had good knowledge of handwashing practices. This was similar to the study reported from Hosanna town (66.1%) [25]. However, the result of the current study on knowledge of washing hands with soap is much lower than study reported from Yirgalem (89%) [8], Bangladesh (89%) [22] and Saudi Arabia (90%) [3]. This difference most probably due to the high sample size used in the current study and the educational status of the family.

The proportion of oral hygiene knowledge among the students was 84.1%. However, among elementary school students in Fiche town, good oral hygiene practice was 55.2%. This result was higher than the previous studies reported from different settings. For instance, the studies reported from Ghana (79.9%) [13] and India (70.4%) [26], in Southeast Serbia (54.5%) [27] reported a lower proportion of oral hygiene knowledge. This difference might be due to sample size and oral hygiene-related culture in different study areas.

Almost half (53.2%) of the students were brushing their teeth once a day. The students who brushed their teeth for less than 60 s were 47.9%, which is Debre Tabor [28]. At Fiche Town Elementary School, 27.5% of students brush their teeth twice a day. This result was much smaller than a study conducted in Saudi Arabia in which 71.7% of elementary school students brushed their teeth [3]. This difference could be due to differences in study area culture, economic status, and sample size.

Female students were 1.8 times more likely to have good hygiene practices compared with male students. This result was supported by the fact that male students are 0.42 less likely to have good personal hygiene practices in Côte d’Ivoire [29] and in Bangladesh [30]. The majority (98%) of men and women agree that washing hands after toileting is important [31]. Moreover, 91% of women and 84% of men are more likely to report the importance of handwashing after toilet use [31].

The students who had good knowledge of personal hygiene were 2.3 times more likely to have good personal hygiene practice compared with those who had poor knowledge, and knowledge significantly determined personal hygiene practice. The present study result is supported by a study reported by Mareko [32] in which personal hygiene practice is 5.1 times higher among those with high knowledge. Moreover, the current study findings are similar to those reported in Debark Town [18].

Diarrheal diseases alone were responsible for 43 (8.1%) of the school absences in the present study. The current study result is smaller (28.8%) than the results of the study reported by Mareko [6]. This is most probably due to the water treatment with chlorine 381 (71.9%) and the study area and time. In this study, almost one-third of the elementary school students were suffering from one or more morbidities related to poor personal hygiene practices in the past two weeks.

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