HEALTH AND HYGIENE PRACTICES AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN IN MANGALORE CITY

Health and hygiene pose grave problems in the entire world. Globally, billions of people do not have access to improved health and hygiene. Sanitation is least cared for. So, this study is undertaken with the objectives, to find the practices of health and hygiene among school children in Mangalore city and to compare the practices on health and hygiene between Government, Private and Aided school children. Tools used for the study were Survey method and Questionnaire. Children in the age range of 10-12 years were selected for the study. Sixteen schools, 8 from north and 8 from south were taken for the study. Questionnaires were distributed to 820 respondents, i.e. 183 Government, 309 Aided and 328 Private school children to elicit information regarding their practices on health and hygiene. Questions were explained to them clearly during the study. The opinions collected by using the questionnaire were scored and tabulated. It was seen from the finding that mean practice scores were found highest in Private school (74.2%) when compared to Government school (55.8%) and Aided school (55.4%) respondents. The data wasanalyzed statistically by using the F test and found that there was a highly significant difference between different types of school and the mean practice score on health and hygiene (F=733.32**).