ASSESSMENT OF PERSONAL HYGIENE PRACTICE AMONG STUDENTS IN SELLECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN OGBIA BAYELSA STATE, NIGERIA

Aim/Objective: The essence of this study was to assess personal hygiene practice among selected public secondary school in Ogbia town. However, the objective was designed to assess the level of knowledge of personal hygiene practice among students in public secondary schools. Materials/Methods: Random sampling technique with the aid of structured questionnaires was adopted to capture all 364 respondents for this study. Results: The socio-demographic characteristics of the study population shows 45.88% males and 54.12% females while ≤ 10-12yrs was 48.62% and ≥ 13yrs (51.88%) respectively. However respondents in JSS1-3 were 51.65% compared with SS1-3 of 48.35%. Most of the respondents (40%) do not have adequate knowledge regarding personal hygiene due to lack of water supply, religious believers and lack of time. Further findings from this study shows that about 76.42% of the respondents have heard of personal hygiene and 33% had their sources of information through teachers. About 58.24% of the respondents had good knowledge towards personal hygiene practice while 41.76% had poor knowledge. Concerning respondents attitude only 48.88% of the respondents had positive attitude regarding personal hygiene while 51.12% had negative attitude towards personal hygiene practice. Finally it was observed that lesser proportion (46.15%) had good practice towards personal hygiene while 53.85% of the respondents had poor practice towards personal hygiene practice. Concerning respondent practice towards personal hygiene, the interpretation of the overall grand mean score of 2.466 is below the criterion mean 2.5 which implies that majority of the respondents did not practice personal hygiene. Conclusion: proper hand hygiene practices should be encouraged during lunch breaks, before eating, and after using the restroom. However, the availability of hand washing facilities, such as sinks with soap and water, is a significant factor influencing whether students adopt this practice. We hereby recommend that government should provide adequate water supply in secondary schools and training be organized for students in all schools on how to maintain proper hygiene at all level regularly to improve their health status.