Assessment of Hygiene Behavior and Associated Factors Among School Children in Shey Bench, Southwest, Ethiopia. An Institutional Based-Cross Sectional Study

Introduction: In underdeveloped countries, such as Ethiopia, the impact of disease burden caused by inadequate, contaminated water and a lack of sanitation is a huge burden. Water and sanitation-related infections are still a high-risk habit among primary school-aged children. As a reason, the objective was to analyze hygiene behavior and associated factors among school children in Shey Bench, Southwest Ethiopia, during the 2018/19 school year. Methods: An institutional-based descriptive cross-sectional study was done in 2019 to collect data from 770 primary school students in grades 5th through 8th from January 1 to 30, 2019. Data were entered into Epi data 4.2 and then analyzed in SPSS V. 21.0. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent factors of hygienic behavior. Results: In this study area, 34.1 percent of school students have good hygiene behavior. Being female students (AOR=2.68), Urban residency (AOR=1.86), having poor hand-washing knowledge (AOR=0.148), lack of availability of hand-washing facility (AOR=0.541), separate toilet for male and female (AOR=2.11), no read and write father's educational status (AOR=0.314) and presence of clubs in the school (AOR=1.75) were all significantly associated with hygienic behavior Conclusion: In general, there is a poor hygiene. Urban residency, no read and write father's educational status, existence of sanitation club in schools, having separate toilets for boys and girls, having hand washing available in the facility, and having poor knowledge of hand washing were all substantially associated to hygienic behavior.