Proper hand washing practices among elementary school students in Selat sub-district, Indonesia

Abstract

Even though proper hand washing is the most effective and easiest way to prevent many diseases, unfortunately many people do not practice hand washing correctly. The worldwide Global Hand Washing Day campaign which targets school children as the most effective agents for behavior change is both evidence of this problem and an attempt to address it. This study considers the implications of this practical policy for local government, health professionals and other stakeholders concerned with improving school-based hygiene intervention programs. This paper describes a cross-sectional descriptive study about hand washing practice, the prevalence of proper hand washing, and related factors among sixth grade of elementary students in Selat sub-district, Indonesia. A self administered questionnaire was administered to 274 students at seven schools randomly selected by proportion to size from five villages. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Chi square tests, and multiple logistic regression to explore associations between the various study factors (i.e. socio-demographic characteristics, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived control, and availability of facilities). Nine combinations of hand washing emerged from this study which combined washing hands by using water and soap with two critical events: before eating and after visiting the toilet. Only 40.5% of the respondents washed their hands properly. Availability of clean water (Adj OR = 4.24, 95% CI = 1.92-9.35) and soap (Adj OR = 5.55, 95% CI = 2.36-13.08) at hand washing stands were found to be significant predictors of proper hand washing, when adjusted with other factors. This study demonstrates that the prevalence of proper hand washing was very low among the school students. Hand washing promotion should be more effective in schools and better facilities need to be more widely available to improve the prevalence of proper hand washing by students.