Study on hand hygiene among urban and rural school students in Jiaxing

Objective To understand the condition of hand hygiene and its influencing factors of hand-washing among school students in Jiaxing,in order to explore effective methods to improve the compliance in health education.Methods The survey by using of questionnaire was conducted on the 1 600 primary and middle school students who were sampled by stratified random sampling from eight urban and rural primary and middle schools in Jiaxing City.Results The results showed that less than 50% students knew the knowledge about hand hygiene,and only 8.31% students washed hands correctly according to the 10-item hand-washing indexes in daily life and 23.81% students could use correctly the six-step procedure in hand washing.On average 18.85% students were unwilling to wash hands subjectively.In particular,there was significant difference between urban and rural students(26.35% vs 12.11%,P0.05).Further analysis showed that 19.56% students felt it inconvenient to wash hands for the lack of liquid soap or soap,lack of towel,and faucet at school.There was significant difference in the lack of soap and towel between urban and rural areas as well(63.51% vs 89.09%,58.11% vs 74.55%,P0.05).The students got knowledge about hand hygiene mainly from their parents(58.81%).Conclusion Multiple measures should be taken to promote knowledge about hand hygiene both in urban and rural schools especially in compliance with correct hand washing.