Environmental Hygiene Practices, Food Safety and Community Health in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review Study.

Abstract

Food safety is a fundamental aspect of community health, ensuring that food consumed by individuals is free from harmful contaminants. WHO estimates that annually, there are nearly 600 million cases globally associated with poor food hygiene. Most studies on hygiene and food safety demonstrate that washing hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds plays a significant role in food safety. The objective of this review was to identify and characterize primary literature examining hygiene practices and food safety with a focus on facility related hygiene practices at household and establishment levels in Sub-Saharan Africa. The scoping review adopted the Joann Briggs institute (JB) manual for reporting items. A comprehensive search was conducted from scientific databases (PubMed) and other research bodies and relevant articles published within 2015-2025. To ensure consistency, three reviewers independently screened the existing studies for relevance. Data extraction was performed using Microsoft excel, and meta-analysis. The extracted data from included studies was organized and presented using narrative synthesis. The review established that most studies identified (WASH) practices as important factors in food safety. Promoting hand washing with soap was found to be an important health intervention in the control of foodborne illnesses. The study further noted that there is limited data on food safety and determinants of environmental factors like air ventilation, cleaning and disinfecting regularly touched surfaces. The study concluded that there is need to explore the existing gap on how air and facility hygiene practices in homes influence foodborne illnesses. Further research is needed to establish to what extent fresh air circulation in indoor space and cleaning and disinfecting regularly touched surfaces in households affects food safety. These results will guide policy on how to enhance food safety knowledge through targeted home-based interventions. Dissemination of these findings will be done through journal publications and various media platforms.