Asian Journal of Medicine and Health

Background: Healthy and well-nourished children are better able to participate completely in school and hence profit from education. Poor hygiene habits contribute to the increasing burden of communicable diseases by causing days lost to illness. The study aims to compare the level of knowledge and practice of personal hygiene of pupils of public and private schools in an urban Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria.

Methods: 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.

Results: Public and private school pupils had very good hygiene knowledge (Χ2=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 (Χ2=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.

Conclusions: Pupils in public and private schools have a very high level of hygiene knowledge but low hygiene practice. This could indicate that additional health personnel are needed in Nigeria and other poor nations to care for the health of schoolchildren.