Personal hygiene plays an important role in preventing communicable diseases especially in children. In developing countries like India, the burden of communicable diseases is high which makes an awareness program imperative in school children. The objective was to study the outcome of school-based intervention program in promoting personal hygiene among the primary school children of Mumbai and Thane. This is a comparative study carried out from July 2015 to March 2016 between intervention and nonintervention groups before and after intervention. Using random sampling, 119 schools in Mumbai and 24 schools in Thane were selected. Our results suggest that knowledge, attitude, and practices were significantly different in end-line than baseline in the intervention group and had better effects as reflected in scores compared with comparison group. The findings reveal that a health education program clubbed with entertainment and interaction can bring positive attitudinal shift which is otherwise difficult to change.
Background: As per the WHO-UNICEF monitoring report 2012, around 626 million people, or half of the population of India defecate in the open; this explains the high burden of communicable diseases in developing countries like India. In this context present study attempts to assess the effectiveness of school-based awareness programme on toilette etiquettes and sanitation in primary school-going children (mean age 9.27 years.) of Mumbai city. Methods: This is a comparative, before and after study between the interventional group and the comparison group. The study was carried out between July 2016 to March 2017, end line survey was carried out approximate 3 months after programme intervention for both the groups. Stratified random sampling was used to select 3737 students in baseline and 3230 students in end line from 130 primary schools run by municipal corporation of greater Mumbai (MCGM).Results: Knowledge and attitude significantly improved in the end line than the baseline survey exorbitantly for the interventional group than the comparison group. Although the comparison group also exhibited some improvement but there was a marked difference as when compared to the interventional group.Conclusions: An innovative education cum entertainment intervention programmes on basic health and hygiene habits focused on toilette etiquettes and sanitation was conducted. This has influenced the KAP among primary school children of Mumbai city. Though individual behaviour is difficult to mould, short to medium term effects of innovative programmes like WASH are encouraging.
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