Hand hygiene status and its associated factors among housemaids working in communal living residences in Jimma city, southwest Ethiopia

Tadele Shiwito Ango; Tizita Teshome; Tesfalem Getahun

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22651

Hand hygiene status and its associated factors among housemaids working in communal living residences in Jimma city, southwest Ethiopia

Heliyon. 2023 Nov 22;9(12):e22651. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22651. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Tadele Shiwito Ango¹, Tizita Teshome², Tesfalem Getahun²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, Mizan Aman Health Science College, P. O. Box 240, Mizan-Aman, Sweprs, Ethiopia.
² Department of Environmental Health Sciences and Technology, Institute of Health Sciences, Jimma University, P. O. Box 378, Jimma, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Objective: Hand hygiene is a milestone, cost-effective, and convenient strategy to prevent the transfer of pathogenic micro-organisms. However, housemaids operating inside a kitchen can be the source of infection. In addition, hand hygiene among housemaids working in dwellings was underexplored. This study aimed to assess the hand hygiene status and associated factors among housemaids working in communal living residences in Jimma City, Southwest Ethiopia.

Methods: A total of 230 housemaids were included in this cross-sectional study. Total samples were proportionally allocated for each residence and a simple random sampling technique was applied to select the study participants. Hand hygiene status and relevant characteristics were collected through face-to-face interviews and observations. Hand swab samples were collected and tested for bacterial contaminants. Then, it was inoculated aseptically using streak-plating methods on mannitol salt agar (MSA), MacConkey agar (MCA), salmonella-shigella agar (SSA), and eosin methylene blue (EMB) agar and then incubated at 37 °C for 24 h. Data was edited, cleaned, and double-entered into Epidata version 3.1 and then exported to the statistical package for social science statistics version 26 for further analysis. Binary logistic regression was used to identify associated factors. Statistically significant was declared at P value < 0.05.

Results: Two hundred twenty-five housemaids were interviewed with a response rate of 97.8 %. The results showed that the proportion of good hand hygiene status among the housemaids was only 28.0 %. Although the majority of participants reported washing their hands frequently, the prevalence of bacterial contaminants on their hands was high at 72 %. The study identified several factors associated with hand hygiene status, including the occupational status of heads of households (AOR = 0.030, 95 % CI: 0.003, 0.348; P = 0.0050), the effectiveness of the heads of household (AOR = 13.955, 95 % CI: 1.442, 13.500; P = 0.0230), and the removal of accessories during handwashing (AOR = 20.844, 95 % CI: 2.190, 9.842; P = 0.0080).

Conclusion: Overall, the hand hygiene status of housemaids was found to be poor and influenced by demographics and other relevant characteristics. The study emphasizes the need for a multimodal strategy involving household heads, local and national authorities, and other stakeholders to raise awareness and advocate for hand hygiene to prevent communicable diseases in the wider community, particularly in the study area.

Keywords: Associated factors; Communal residences; Hand hygiene status; Housemaids.