A STUDY OF FOOD HANDLERS IN A TEACHING HOSPITAL OF JHARKHAND, INDIA

Tuhin Chakraborty, Amit Nishant, Nayan Sinha, Priya Mishra, *Dewesh Kumar and Vivek Kashyap

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Food handlers with poor personal hygiene and lack of awareness of important issues in preventing food borne diseases, working in food establishments could be potential sources of infections. This paper attempts to study the health status and awareness related to health in food handlers of a teaching hospital of Jharkhand. Methodology: It was a cross-sectional study conducted during September 2017 to November 2017 in the food establishments inside the premises of RIMS, Ranchi. All the food handlers working in the food establishments (hospital kitchen and mess) who satisfied the inclusion criteria of study were interviewed on various aspects of health. The data were collected using ODK collect app in hand sets and the data was transferred in Microsoft excel for further analysis. Results: A total of 76 food handlers were studied , out of them 88.15% were males and nearly 50% belonged to age group less than 25 years. Approximately two third study participants spent 8-12 hours at work and 93.42% of them didn’t take a single day leave due to illness. None of them took any vaccines against the diseases of public health importance transmitted via food and water. Amongst the vaccines, BCG and Tetanus were the ones which was given to them at some point of time. Conclusion: Vaccination status of food handlers working in RIMS campus was not satisfactory, government authorities should take appropriate steps to increase awareness towards immunization to Hepatitis A, cholera and enteric fever and also make proper arrangements for the same.

Keywords: Food handlers, vaccination, health status, food safety.