Abstract: Introduction: There is a growing demand for food safety information at the international, national and local level. Each day thousands of people die from preventable foodborne diseases. Occurrence of food borne illnesses can be attributed to many factors; one of it is the handling process of food preparation especially by food handlers.
Objectives; to assess the prevalence of knowledge on food hygiene and sanitation practices among food handlers and association between knowledge and practices among food handlers of various settings.
Materials and Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted between Augusts to October2015. Within 5 kilometers of Medical College, 5 Hotels, 7 restaurants and 24 dhabas were selected randomly and their food handlers were interviewed by using pre-tested questionnaire. Data was collected and results were analyzed by using frequency tables and proportions. Chi-square test was used to find out the association. Epi-info software was used for statistical analysis.
Results: Out of total, 60% hotels and 42.8% restaurants were followed good food hygiene and sanitation practices while 28.6% restaurants and 58.3% dhabas exhibited poor food hygiene and sanitations practices. A significant association was seen between knowledge of food hygiene and sanitation practices among food handlers of various food settings (p-value<0.05).
Conclusions: Consumption of foods at small restaurants and dhabas poses a high risk for the consumers because most of food handlers were lack of knowledge of food hygiene and poor sanitation practices in these premises.
