Hygienic and Sanitary Practices among Street Food Vendors - Sagnarigu Municipality of Northern Region, Ghana, 2020

Street food vending is a popular income generation activity in developing countries, especially in most cities and towns. Street food vendors normally operate under conditions that could expose consumers to foodborne illnesses. The main objective of the study was to assess sanitary and hygiene practices of street food vendors in the Sagnarigu Municipality. A descriptive cross-sectional study was adopted, questionnaire and multistage sampling technique used, involving purposive and simple random sampling techniques to arrive at a sample size of 270 street food vendors. SPSS was used for data analysis. Univariate and bivariate analyses were conducted. Majority (94.1%) of respondents were females, 32.6% had no formal education, and 39.6% were in the business for 2-3 years. About 81.9% of vending sites were located by the road side, 60.9% close to open gutters, 98.9% of the participants held money with bare hands as well as food. Most of the participants (95.2%) were not wearing face masks, no apron used (90.0%). Also, about 65.2% did not have professional training, no periodic medical examinations (75.9%), no medical certificate to show (83%), and 98.5% had no food safety manual available. Level of respondents’ education showed a significant relationship with location of vending site, waste bin availability at site, frequency to which water used to wash utensils was changed, handling money with bare hands when handling food, provision of veronica bucket at vending site, professional training and licensed to operate as food vendor. The study recommends that Environmental Health Officers may have to consider conducting regular visits to street food vending sites to ensure that high food safety standards were upheld. The study further recommends that the Ghana Education Service (GES) increases school enrolment and girls in particular so as to have more educated people in the future in the food business.