Assessing the Knowledge and Practices of Hand Hygiene Among School Children in Islamabad

Abstract

Hand hygiene is the only effective and one of the inexpensive way to prevent infectious diseases among school-aged children, the most vulnerable group due to their increase exposure to crowded classrooms, irregular or inconsistent hygiene habits and poor sanitation. Hand hygiene is worldwide known as an easy way for preventing diseases, but Pakistani schools struggles with both hand hygiene knowledge and practices. This study examined the children in Islamabad to know about hygiene knowledge and how they act according to their knowledge. The objective of this study is to measure the children knowledge and their actual hygiene practices. A cross-sectional survey was conducted though a structured questionnaire from 240 students of age 6-14 years. Then the data was analyze through SPSS by descriptive analysis and p-values to check for the association between the gender, age ,grade and school type with hygiene practices. The results analyzed that the children knew a lot about the importance of hand washing almost 85.5% which is a majority of population, 84.1% knew that dirty hands can spread diseases. But the level of practices was very poor among children where 66.2% showed unfavourable hand hygiene practices, 49% didn’t cover their mouth while coughing and almost 94.2% did not wash their hands after sneezing into their hands. The p-value analysis showed no significant link between hygiene practices and demographic variable where all p were less than 0.05 ( p>0.05) which was a proof that knowledge practice gap is across all the groups. The study recommends that the schools should teach and provide an environment that can influence children about hand washing practices like hand washing duration, ensure the availability hygiene resources, ensures the active engagement of teachers and parents to develop and maintain healthy hygiene habits of school students ensuring hygiene habits sustainability.