Personal Hygiene in Public and Private Schools in an Urban Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria: A Comparative Study

This study is necessitated by the need to know the state of the personal hygienic practices of school pupils as well as environmental hygiene conditions and to compare this status between the public and private schools, to make evidence-based recommendations on how to promote further or strengthen school-based health program in the state. Children who are healthy and well-fed are better able to engage fully in class and thereby benefit from education. By resulting in days missed from illness, poor hygiene practises contribute to the growing burden of communicable diseases. This comparative cross-sectional study was conducted in four public and private primary schools in Port Harcourt LGA, Rivers State. The sample size was calculated and 139 pupils were randomly selected, 75 in the public and 64 in the private schools. Data collection was done with the use of interviewer-administered questionnaire. Data was analysed using SPSS Version 16. Differences in means were compared using Student’s t-test while association between categorical variables were examined with Chi-Square (X2) test. A probability value ?0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Public and private school pupils had very good hygiene knowledge (?2=0.101; p=0.97). Assessment of the personal hygiene revealed that the proportion of pupils who were rated as ‘very clean’ was higher in the private schools than the public schools, although not statistically significant (?2=2.881; p=0.277). There were significant differences in favour of the private schools in the cleanliness of the nails, body (skin) and mouth/teeth with p-values of 0.027, 0.003 and 0.003 respectively. Pupils in public and private schools have a very high level of hygiene knowledge but low hygiene practice. The study forms part of the baseline for evaluating future programming and interventions for addressing hygiene behaviour among schools and school children. This could indicate that additional health personnel are needed in Nigeria and other poor nations to care for the health of schoolchildren.