Knowledge,Attitude and Practice of Food Handleres About Food Safety in Assiut University Hospitals

Food is vital for life but can only serve such an important purpose if it is safe and secure to ingest . According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Food safety is defined as" an assurance that food will not cause harm to consumers when it is prepared and/or eaten according to its intended use" .

Food safety is one of food handler responsibilities . Food handler is defined as "any person who directly handles packaged or unpackaged food ,food equipment and utensils, or food contact surfaces and therefore expected to comply with food hygiene requirements".

Food handling includes all steps of storing, processing, preparing, serving, and preserving food until reaching final consumption . The World Health Organization (WHO) also determined five factors connected to the occurrence of food related llnesses including: unhygienic practices and insufficient sanitation by food handlers, inadequate cooking procedures, improper storage without considering temperature requirements, cross contamination, and sourcing food from unsafe places. Most of these factors are under the responsibility of food handlers who are involved in food production and preparation . According to WHO (2015), food borne diarrheal disease kills about two million people yearly, particularly in developing countries . Statistics of Food Safety Conference in 2013 revealed that 30 million Egyptians are infected with dangerous diseases due to contamination of water, food and environment. This made Egypt one of the greatest affected countries by food-borne diseases. The heavy burden of food borne diseases imposes substantial economic losses to individual, households, health systems and entire nations .

As poor food hygienic practices could contribute food -borne diseases in hospital, so food handlers' knowledge, attitude and practicing is an important factor that is essential in order to lower food borne disease. All three traits; knowledge, attitude and education are compulsory to enable safe food handling practices.

This was supported by previous studies that have demonstrated the essential role of inadequate food handling knowledge, attitude and practice in occurrence of food poisoning .