Assessment of personal hygiene amongst pubertal secondary school students of Divine Christian College, Umuamacham, Umueze, Aba, Abia state

Abstract

Background:

Personal hygiene involves those practices performed by an individual to care for one’s body, health and wellbeing through cleanliness. Inadequate hygiene practices play major roles in the increased burden of communicable diseases within the developing countries such as Nigeria.

Aim:

The aim of this study is to determine the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of personal hygiene among pubertal secondary school students of Divine Christian College, Umuamacham, Aba.

Methodology:

This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study using self-Interviewer administered questionnaires to obtain data from the study participants. Data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20 and level of statistical significance was set at P<0.05.

Results:

From the study conducted, it was discovered that the study participants had a very good knowledge of personal hygiene with a percentage of 94.3%, only few showed negative attitudes (5%) and the majority had good practice (99.7%).

Conclusion:

From the outcome of the result, majority had a very good knowledge of personal hygiene with corresponding yield in their practice; this could be attributed to their environmental exposure, as majority of the study participants heard about personal hygiene from their school, and the high level of education among their parents and guardians.