Complementary Food Hygiene Practice among Mothers or Caregivers in Bale Zone, Southeast Ethiopia: A Community Based Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Diarrhea and other foodborne diseases are a major public health problem which predominantly affects infants and young children. Appropriate complementary food hygiene practice is very important to reduce the prevalence of foodborne illnesses among children. This study is aimed to assess complementary food hygiene practices among mothers of children aged 6–23 months. Methods A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in Robe town. Sample of 517 mother-child pairs were selected using systematic sampling techniques. Data was collected using pre-tested and structured questionnaire. Each variable were described by using the frequency and percentage. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with complementary food hygiene practice score. Odds ratios with 95% confidence interval were used to assess level of significance. Results From a total of 508 mothers that were interviewed, 55% of them scored above the mean score of food hygiene practices. Mothers had higher odds to practice good food hygiene measures than those of aged 6–11 months. Mothers whose child attends growth monitoring session practice good food hygiene than their counterpart. Mothers having media exposure, and having knowledge on critical times of hand washing practice relatively good food hygiene measures. Among food hygiene measures; handwashing practice with water and soap were low before eating food, before feeding children and before preparing food when compared with after visiting toilet and touching dirt. Conclusions The study identified food hygiene practices in the current study area were mainly associated with child age, growth monitoring follow-up, maternal awareness about critical times of hand washing, and media exposure. Improving knowledge of mothers on critical times of handwashing, strengthening growth monitoring follow-up and media promotion are important measures to improve food hygiene practices among mothers of infants and young children.