CONTRIBUTION OF FOOD SAFETY BEHAVIOUR TO HEALTH STATUS OF RURAL DWELLERS IN SOUTHWESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract

Appropriate food safety behaviour (knowledge, attitude and practice) is one of the predictors of sound health. Poor food handling in most rural households often leads to food contamination which could impact negatively on their health status. There are previous studies on food safety knowledge, attitude and practices however, there is a dearth of information on nexus between food safety behaviour and health status of rural households. Therefore, the contribution of food safety behaviour to health status of rural dwellers in Southwestern Nigeria was investigated. A four-stage sampling procedure was used. Three of the six states (Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti) in Southwestern Nigeria were randomly selected. Twenty percent of rural Local Government Areas (LGAs) from these states (4, 3 and 2, respectively) were randomly selected to give nine LGAs. Thereafter, two wards each were randomly selected to give 8, 6 and 4 for Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti states, respectively. Using proportionate sampling technique, 5% of rural households were selected from the wards to give a total of 270 respondents. Interview schedule was used to elicit information on respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, sources of information on food safety, food safety behaviour (knowledge, attitude and practice), constraints to food safety practices, food borne illness experienced, health care utilisation and health status. Indices of health status (poor, 0.3-8.9; good, 9.0-13.2), food safety behaviour (inappropriate, 0.0-6.5; appropriate, 6.6-11.1), comprising knowledge (low, 2.0-13.8; high, 13.8-19.0), attitude (unfavourable, 23.0-47.1; favourable, 47.2-68.0), practice (low, 12.0-31.8; high, 31.9-40.0), were generated. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation, ANOVA and multiple regression at α0.05 . Respondents’ age, years of formal education and monthly income were 43.0±11.9 years, 8.5±16.3 years and ₦33,324.00±₦12,300.00, respectively. Majority of respondents were female (75.6%) and married (82.2%), with household size of 4.8±1.8 persons. Food safety information was mostly sourced (95.1%) from friends and family. Knowledge of food safety was high (63.7%) among the respondents, while 58.9% had unfavourable attitude to food safety. Most respondents (61.9%) used food safety practices, while 56.3% had appropriate food safety behaviour. The major constraints to food safety practices were lack of infrastructure (83.5%) and inadequate finance (80.0%). Fever chills (50.4%) was the most experienced foodborne illness, while self-medication was the health care service mostly utilised (1.88±0.26). Majority of respondents (62.2%) had good health status. Food safety behaviour (r=0.330) was significantly related to health status. Respondents’ food safety behaviour differed significantly among the states. Food safety behaviour was appropriate in Oyo state (6.9±2.2), but inappropriate in Ogun (6.4±1.7) and Ekiti (5.8±3.1) states. Respondents’ had good health status in Ogun (9.8±1.8) and Oyo (9.3±1.8) states but poor in Ekiti (7.2±3.1) state. Respondents’ health status depended more on knowledge of food safety (β=0.323) than attitude to food safety (β=0.180) and food safety practices (β=0.107). The food safety behaviour of rural households contributed positively to their health status. Sensitisation programmes on available media should be launched in rural areas to raise awareness on importance of appropriate food safety behaviour.