LOW LEVEL OF FOOD HANDLING PRACTICES AMONG FOOD-HANDLERS IN SELECTED RESTAURANTS IN GGABA KAMPALA, MAKINDYE DIVISION UGANDA: AN IMPLICATION FOR SAFTETY TRAINING AND REGULATION

Background: Food borne diseases remain a major global public health issue with increased morbidity and mortality associated with consuming contaminated food material mostly predicted by the food handlers level of hygiene during the course of food preparations.This study assessed the level of food-handling behaviors among food-handlers in selected Restaurants in Ggaba, Kampala and determined whether demographic characteristics predict the risk of food-borne diseases. Methodology: The study was a food vendor-based cross-sectional study employing a researcher administered questionnaire to capturepertinent data on the food handling practices among 286 randomly selected participants measured on a 4-point likert scale responses. The variable items were computed together using SPSS version 25 to assess the score levelreported using simple descriptive statistics and further binary categorization was done for all the variables to explore the demographic predictors of poor food-handling behaviors using logistic regression. Analysis of variance was used to test differences in the level of food-handling practices across demographic characteristics at a cut-off of (p≤0.05) level of significance. Results: It was found out that the level of safe food handling practices measured on 18-point reference scale reported a mean score of 6.62 (CI= 6.33±6.90)and SD of ±2.45, denoting 37% of the complete safe food-handling practices expected from the respondents. Categorically, the findings showed that less than half of the respondents (43.4%) displayed good safe food-handling behavior. Older respondents (≥ 61 years) and food-handlers with primary educational attainment among others insignificantly demonstrated the poorest scores for safe food-handling behaviors. It was further observed that male respondents displayed the lowest score for safe food-handling practices (F=4.039, p=0.045). Similarly, at bivariate level, male respondents are 1.8 times more likely to display poor food-handling practice compared to females (AOR=1.8, 95% CI=1.07±3.08) whereas at multivariate level, no significant demographic predictor was found out.The findings further showed that less than half of the respondents (41%)self-reported to initiate hand washing most of the timebefore handling food, while only 1 in every 3 respondentssometimes employ hand gloves during food-handling procedure, more than two-third of the respondents (71.7%) do not always put on a face mask while handling food. By gender, 71% of them were Females of 40 years of age or below and 4 out every 5 participants (89.5%) had primary educational attainment or below. Conclusions: The study indicated a poor and unsatisfactory low level of Food-Handling Practices among Food-Handlers in the region mainly predicted by the gender of the respondents, and raised the need for personalized health education and training on safe handling of food as well as improved sanitation and personal hygienein order to avert potential health threats to consumers.