A cross‐sectional study on food safety knowledge and practices among food handlers in tertiary and second circle institutions in Ho municipality, Ghana

Abstract

In recent years, incidences of food poisoning have been reported in some schools across the country. However, little attention has been paid to the hygiene practices of food vendors in the schools. This study, therefore, investigates the food safety knowledge and practices of food vendors catering for tertiary and second cycle students in the Ho municipality. The piloted and validated questionnaire used to sample 608 respondents revealed that the majority of the respondents sampled were female (76.0%), between the ages of 26 and 40 (51%), married (47.4%), and have tertiary or senior high school certificate (60.7%). They have been in business for not more than 2 years (36.2%) and had neither food safety (62.3%) nor good manufacturing practice (81.9%) training. However, they have sufficient knowledge in food safety regarding purchasing, storage, cooking and reheating, and personal hygiene, but exhibited poor knowledge and practice of food temperature control protocols. Both Kendall's tau‐b coefficient correlation and linear regression model revealed a significant positive correlation between food safety knowledge and practices of the vendors. Nevertheless, regular training and monitoring are necessary to enable the vendors to fully implement the food temperature control protocols, which is one of the major causes of food poisoning in the country.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of food handling practices in Ghana vis-a-vis the associated factors among food handlers during 2009 and 2022

“…This concurs with an earlier Ethiopian meta-analysis that found that food handlers with good food hygiene knowledge were more likely to apply good FHPs than their ignorant counterparts 8 . Poor FHPs could critically affect the health of food consumers, with severe food poisoning and consequently the spread of FBDs; hence, our finding affirms the recommendation by the WHO 11 of frequent assessment of FHP knowledge to prevent FBDs.…”

“…The 33 studies 2 , 4 , 6 , 7 , 11 , 12 , 16 – 42 included were published between 2009 and 2022 and were cross-sectionally designed with a total of 6095 food handlers. Six major studies were carried out in the Greater Accra 2 , 20 , 27 , 28 , 35 , 38 and Volta 6 , 11 , 23 , 25 , 30 , 32 regions, and five were carried out in the Northern region 12 , 21 , 34 , 40 , 41 .…”

“…The 33 studies 2 , 4 , 6 , 7 , 11 , 12 , 16 – 42 included were published between 2009 and 2022 and were cross-sectionally designed with a total of 6095 food handlers. Six major studies were carried out in the Greater Accra 2 , 20 , 27 , 28 , 35 , 38 and Volta 6 , 11 , 23 , 25 , 30 , 32 regions, and five were carried out in the Northern region 12 , 21 , 34 , 40 , 41 . Eighteen studies 2 , 6 , 7 , 12 , 16 , 19 , 21 – 23 , 25 , 28 , 30 , 32 – 34 , 36 , 41 , 42 used a simple random sampling technique, and 4 , 20 , 26 , 27 , 38 , 39 used systematic sampling (18.2%; n = 6) (Table 1 ).…”

“…Regarding the quality of the included studies, eight studies 4 , 6 , 11 , 20 , 22 , 26 , 34 , 40 had a low risk of bias (24.2%), and 25 studies 2 , 7 , 12 , 16 – 19 , 21 , 23 – 25 , 27 – 33 , 35 – 39 , 41 , 42 had a moderate risk of bias (75.8%) (Supplementary File Table 3 , on pages 2 and 3).…”

“…The proportion of good FHPs among Ghanaian food handlers based on individual observational studies ranged between 24.4 19 and 87.0% 2 . Frequent FBD outbreaks such as diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid in Ghana are presumably directly associated with poor FHPs and poor environmental sanitation 11 – 13 .…”