A Study on Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Practices in a village of Ranchi District of Jharkhand

Sanitation and hygiene are critical to health, survival, and development. Many countries are challenged in providing adequate sanitation for their entire populations, leaving people at risk for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) -related diseases. Throughout the world, an estimated 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation (more than 32 % of the world’s population) The goal of the study was to get a better insight about the level of awareness and explore knowledge on hand hygiene among middle and high school students` Objective: to find out the knowledge, attitude and practices about personal hygiene and sanitation. Materials and methods Type of study: Community based cross-sectional observational study. Place of study. One purposively selected High school situated in a ruler area in Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. Duration of study: one month. Study population: Total 100 respondent were selected randomly from rural area. Study tool. A pre-designed, pre-tested and structured questionnaire. Result: In this study the most common time for hand washing mentioned by 100 % of the respondents was washing their hand before and after eating meal. Only (66 %) respondents reported that they washed their hands with soap and dettol. Out of 50 respondents, more than 50 percent (n=100) respondents did not follow any methods of water treatment and only 12 % respondent use RO water for drinking. The most common 84 % get drinking water from bore well. Conclusion: This study confirmed low knowledge and attitude levels of sanitation but good practice levels of hygiene. The knowledge and practice on hygiene and sanitation among the school of Nayatoli Simaliya was found to be fair.