Street food vendors have survived the test of time, dangerous working conditions, and the failure of the ministry of public health and sanitation to acknowledge their existence, feeding more than half of the city's population. As contentious as it may appear, whether street food vendors are operating unlawfully in the market system or not, the fact remains that the unsuspecting public continues to put themselves in danger by consuming unsupervised food. The street food vendors are the jury and judges of what should be sold or not offered to their trusting customers, whose numbers will continue to rise if the current trend continues. The study attempted to assess the hygienic and food handling standards of street food sellers in Nakuru town against this backdrop. The purpose of this study is to assess sanitary food handling methods among street food sellers in Kenya's Nakuru County. This will alert the general public, particularly those who consume street foods, to the risk of contracting food-borne diseases as a result of their consumption. The participants in the study were all street food sellers. All street food vendors that cook and sell cooked items on the street were the target population, while all street food vendors who met the inclusion requirements inside Nakuru's central business district were the accessible population. The researchers utilised a cross-sectional study design. Using Fischer's et al., [1] formula, a sample size of 384 was determined. Mugenda et al. [2] and Kothari [3] explained how cluster sampling was used in this work. After that, the core business centre was divided into four quadrants and proportionate sampling was carried out. According to Ahuja et al., [4], a sampling frame of street food sellers was created from each cluster and randomly sampled to determine the required number of respondents. Data was gathered in both qualitative and quantitative formats. Structured questionnaires and an observation checklist were employed, which had been pre-tested and standardised. The data was analysed and presented descriptively using Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 17. According to the statistics, 318 (83%) of respondents had cleaned their workplace, 207 (54%) of vendors handled money and food indiscriminately, 169 (44%) had dust bins, and 280 (73%) of respondents did not have their hair covered. The study suggests that involved parties provide periodic health education and promotion training for street food sellers on sanitary food handling methods.
Author (S) Details
Faith Hope Muhonja
Community Health and Development- Great Lakes University of Kisumu, Mount Kenya University, Kenya.
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