Interventional Program about Food Safety Knowledge and Handling Practices among Medical Students

Abstract

Gastrointestinal infections caused by food or drink contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses and parasites are known as foodborne illnesses. Raising awareness can be accomplished most effectively through health education. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of health education program on the level of food safety knowledge and practice.From September 2022 to the end of August 2023, an interventional study was conducted at Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Egypt. Sixty two medical studentsof both sexwere included in the study and divided into two equal groups (intervention and control). The researcher applied two interviewing questionnaires for all participants; the first one focused on socio demographic characteristics, while the second one (pre/post intervention) assessed the food safety knowledge and food-handling practices. The result showed no statistically significant difference between the intervention and control groups pre-intervention regarding total knowledge and practice scores where only (6.5%, 9.7%) and (16.1%, 9.7%) of them had satisfactory knowledge and competent practice respectively. Post-intervention, a highly statistically significant difference was found between the two groups where (80.6%, 16.1%) and (90.3%, 12.9%) of them had satisfactory and competent practices respectively with the percent of improvement among intervention group was (91.27%) for knowledge and (90.95%) for practice. The study concluded that a major state of insufficient levels of food safety knowledge and practice among the Zagazig medical students and the application of an interventional program leads to highly statistical significant improvement among them.