Knowledge & Practice about Personal Hygiene among Primary School Students in Rural Chattogram, Bangladesh

Abstract

Personal hygiene aids in the disease prevention and health promotion. It is vital in every phase of life, but good cleanliness behavior starts in childhood. Poor hand cleanliness consistently causes gastrointestinal infections. Health education promotes hand washing, which reduces communicable diseases among schoolchildren. This study evaluated the level of knowledge and practices of the personal hygiene and also to assess the association between proper knowledge and practice of personal hygiene among primary school children in rural Chattogram. The study followed the cross-sectional descriptive study design and primary data collection technique has been used to collect the data by using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of both open and close-ended questions. This study was conducted among the primary school students of two primary schools located at Chadanaish Upazila, Chattogram, Pathandandi Government Primary School & East Chandanaish Government Primary School from October 2022 to April 2023. The study included N=250 primary school children. Most of them were females 129 (51.6%), and all of them were rural resident with their age ranged between 6-10 years and median age 8 years. More than three quarters of the children knew the importance of hand washing (81.2%), cleaning ear (84.3%) and importance of hand washing with soap (85.6%). On the other hand more than half of them had a special towel and comb. About two thirds of children (65.6%) had well to moderate knowledge with more than half (55.2%) had good practice. Male children had a better knowledge and practice than female ones. Residence had no significant effect on children knowledge and practice. Primary school student’s knowledge and practices about personal hygiene were deficient in some aspects.