THE KEY TO SAFE FOOD DELIVERY- HEALTHY FOOD HANDLERS

The study assessed the health status of food handlers and associated factors at Hotels and Restaurants in Adama town Ethiopiafrom November 13 to December 12 2017. Cross-sectional study design used simple random sampling technique applied and data collected from 422-sampled food handlers. To identify the association between dependent and independent variables; multivariate logistic analysis was applied using S.P.S.S version 20 software and A.O.R with 95% CI at p-value <0.05 used to ascertain association.Based on the result food handlers with good health status found to be 160 (37.9%) and the rest categorized as poor. Moreover the study found that hand washing before/after food preparations (P.V=0.001) hand washing after toilet visits/dirt (P.V= 0.001) training (P.V= 0.036) medical check-ups (P.V=0.001) and clean work uniforms (P.V=0.001) were factors independently associated with the health status of food handlers.Therefore the study concluded that a large proportion (62.1%) of food handlers found to be poor in their health status.