Food hygiene practices and associated factors among food handlers in food establishments of Jimma City, Southwest Ethiopia.

Background: Food hygiene has been a global headache due to its high impact on human health as well as its adverse effects on socioeconomic productivity. It is important to recognize the worth of food handlers' hygienic practices at food establishments to achieve community health. However, little is known about food handlers' food hygienic practice and its associated factors with the huge increment of food establishments in the study area.

Objective: This study aimed to assess food hygiene practices and associated factors among food handlers working in food establishments in Jimma City, Southwest Ethiopia.

Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted using a simple random sampling technique to select a total of 316 food handlers by using a semi-structured questionnaire. After the interviews, hand swabs were collected and immediately transferred to the microbiology lab for the isolation of selected bacteria. The swab samples were cultured and identified using standard operating procedures. The data were entered into Epi Data (version 4.6.0) and exported to SPSS (version 29) for further analysis. Binary logistic regression was then used, with a p-value of 0.05 considered as an associated factor.

Results: The study results showed that only 28.4% of the food handlers had good food hygiene practices. Additionally, 45.1% of the 310 swabs collected from the hands of food handlers tested positive for bacterial contamination, with Staphylococcus aureus being the most predominantly isolated bacteria. Role as waiter (AOR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.99), the type of food establishment (bar and restaurant) (AOR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.15, 0.88), being negative for isolated bacteria (AOR = 2.95, 95% CI: 1.42, 6.13), having a positive attitude (AOR = 2.32, 95% CI: 1.13, 4.73), and having good knowledge (AOR = 8.23, 95% CI: 4.03, 16.78) toward food hygiene were among associated factors of food hygiene practices.

Conclusion: The majority of food handlers were found to have poor food hygiene practices, indicating low adherence to proper food handling practices. Emphasis should be placed on delivering periodic and effective health education to improve food handlers' hygiene practices.