Hospital food safety regarding food handlers knowledge practices in Khartoum

Introduction

The hands of food handlers can spread foodborne diseases for reasons such as neglect of personal hygiene or cross-contamination. For example, poor personal hygiene may be widespread after using the toilet, or bacteria may be spread from raw to fresh foods such as green salad by the hands of food handlers (Ehiri et al., 1996). The patient in the hospital needs safe and appropriate food so that he/she does not suffer from harmful health consequences such as nutrition related disease (Sharif et al., 2013). Neglecting personal hygiene can also contribute to food-borne diseases in the hospital, such as the transfer of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (Garcia et al., 2015). Food born disease can cause severe and/or long-lasting damage to health (Tomkins et al., 1989). Various pathogens have been identified as causing diarrhoeal diseases. Some of these include bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Shigella spp., Salmonella spp., Vibrio cholerae ,Campylobacter jejune; protozoa such as Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica, Cryptosporidium , rotavirus, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium perfringens, helminths (Black et al., 1980), (Tardelli et al., 1991) and E. coli are probably the commonest illnesses in developing countries (Esrey et al., 19858). Foodborne diseases means diseases that result from eating contaminated foods, and there are more than 250 different risks that can be transmitted through food, including infectious bacteria, viruses and parasites which can be transmitted through food handles ( Li et al., 2019 ). It has been documented that many foodborne diseases are transmitted by consumers when they are travelling to consumer such as patients in hospitals which may worsen their condition, especially if they are immunosuppressed (Mohammed et al., 2020). Food handlers may contaminate food by malpractices linked to a lack of knowledge about the basics of food safety, including personal hygiene, proper cooking and storage temperature, and cross-contamination (Hardstaff et al., 2018). This knowledge can be enhanced by training of food handlers in food safety and hygiene (Addo et al., 2020). The personal hygiene of food handlers plays an important factor in the safety of foods, especially those served in hospitals, by avoiding transferring the microbe to the food and then to the consumer (Bartram et al., 2010). All food handlers should be trained on topics related to good hygiene practices, hazard analysis and critical control points. There is also training in identifying inappropriate employee behavior and explaining how to correct these problems (Medeiros et al., 2011). This is to impart basic knowledge about the causative agents of food-borne diseases (Mitchell et al., 2007) which should focus on the theoretical and practical elements of training for food services (Howells et al., 2008).

There is a weakness in food services in some underdeveloping countries, especially for food handlers in hospitals and also those working to supervise them (Turnlund et al., 1983), (Abdelkadir, 2017). There is a lot of important health knowledge and practices that food handlers must follow, such as maintaining personal hygiene, which includes: bathing and trimming nails, treating skin allergies, wounds, using hand sanitizer, washing clothes regularly, washing hands regularly, and washing the scalp. And hair, wearing personal protective equipment, avoiding coughing, sneezing, spitting around food, scratching the skin and hair, touching wounds, applying all healthy behaviors and applying the correct service standards (Pilling et al., 2008).

In the context of my work in this field, there are a large number of patients in public hospitals who depend on the free meal provided to them, but there is little research that has been conducted in this field. Therefore, it was necessary to shed light on the workers' knowledge of the importance and application of food hygiene and safety, provided that it extends to Work on the extent of the impact of this on the meals provided by analysing some samples from workers and foods to determine the relationship between the application of health systems and their impact on the safety and hygiene of the foods provided so that the patient enjoys a good meal free of contaminants and thus not wasting some meals due to the reluctance of some patients to do so.