Background: Absenteeism amongst pre-school children is often due to illnesses such as hand, foot, and mouth disease, acute gastroenteritis, cold and fu, which are easily spread amongst them. This is because of weak immunity and lack of knowledge on proper hand hygiene. This quasi-experimental study assessed the efcacy of an intervention consisting of a hand hygiene education programme, along with digital tools in bringing about a change in behaviour and health conditions amongst preschool children in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Methods: A total of 377 school children, male and female, aged 5–6 years old, participated and were assigned to either the intervention or a control group. During the 2 months intervention period, children in the test group were trained on proper hand hygiene practices and techniques with the aid of the interactive android-based tablets. The numbers of absent days of all the children were recorded for 2 months before the intervention and during the intervention. Results: In the test group, there was a 25% increase in the total number of absent days from the pre-intervention period to the intervention period, a much lesser increment observed as compared to that of control group in which the increase was much higher at 89%. Results: showed a signifcant diference (P<0·05) between the absenteeism rates for the test and control group during the intervention period. Conclusion: These results suggest that proper education and intervention increase hand hygiene compliance, which may help decrease school absenteeism due to illness; however, a longer study duration may be necessary to evaluate the beneft further.

Background: Hand hygiene is regarded as the most important measure to prevent spread of infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of a prototype application in an electronic device in educating, stimulating and monitoring hand hygiene quality in young children. Method: A pre-school was provided with an interactive hand hygiene application for two months. The device features an online administrator dashboard for data collection and for monitoring the children’s hand washing steps and duration. A good hand washing is defined as hand washing which comprise all of the steps outlined in the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Results: The prototype managed to capture 6882 hand wash performed with an average of 20.85 seconds per hand wash. Washing hands palm to palm was the most frequent (79.9%) step performed, whereas scrubbing fingernails and wrists were the least (56%) steps performed. Conclusions: The device is a good prototype to educate, stimulate and monitor good hand hygiene practices. However, other measures should be undertaken to ensure sustainability of the practices.

Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) mainly affects children below 􀏐ive years of age. The disease can be prevented by focusing on hand hygiene, disinfection of premises, and cough etiquette. Teachers at pre-school play a vital role in inculcating good hygiene habits among children. This project aimed to determine pre and post-intervention level of knowledge, attitude and practices on HFMD among pre-schools teachers. This study involved pre-school teachers from Ampang, Selangor, Malaysia who were invited to a 5-hour event ”HFMD: Infection Control Workshop”. Questionnaires on knowledge, attitude and practice on HFMD were distributed before and immediately after the event. A total of 112 teachers were recruited. All were female, mostly (90%) from government pre-schools with the mean age of 35.8. Post-intervention total means a score of knowledge increased significantly, notably on the causative agent (23%) and complications of HFMD (26-45%). Mean attitude scores were also significantly increased, especially regarding the cleaning of toys and sharing of utensils. Meanwhile, practice scores were very high during pre-intervention but were insignificantly reduced post-intervention. The intervention improved respondents’ knowledge and attitude significantly. Findings from this study highlighted the need to provide more HFMD program focusing on the basic information of the disease, including mode of transmission and clinical manifestation. We hope that the knowledge gained will be imparted to fellow teachers and children under their care towards minimising the spread of HFMD.

Foodborne disease related to commercial eateries remains a major concern in food safety control programs worldwide. This study aimed to assess the impact of the FOODAlyzer© as a web-based food safety education system on the knowledge, attitude, and perception of selecting commercial eateries among students of non-health-related courses in higher educational institutions in Peninsular Malaysia. The interventional study design was used as follows: the intervention group (n = 59) was compared with the control group (n = 59) in the pre-test (before the intervention), post-test (immediately after the intervention), and follow-up post-test (two weeks later). Baseline data showed that both the intervention and control groups had no significant difference in knowledge score, attitude, and perception. The intervention group achieved a higher knowledge score (p = 0.022) and attitude score (p < 0.0001), indicating a significant impact of food safety education in the FOODAlyzer© compared with the control group. The test of within-subjects showed a significant increase in respondents’ scores on knowledge, attitude, and perception. By contrast, the test of between-subjects found that the intervention group achieved a higher knowledge score (p = 0.022) and attitude score (p < 0.0001), which indicates a significant impact of food safety education compared with the control group. The findings suggest that knowledge and attitude in selecting commercial eateries based on food safety criteria among the students remained lacking. This paper presents the impact of food safety education to empower consumers towards the selection of commercial eateries and thus reduce the risk of foodborne illness.

Determining the level of customer satisfaction in cleanliness regarding a product or service is a significant aspect of businesses. However, the availability of feedback tools for consumers to evaluate the cleanliness of a restaurant is a crucial issue as several aspects of cleanliness need to be evaluated collectively. To overcome this issue, this study designed a survey instrument based on the standard form used for grading the food premises and transformed it into a seven Likert scale questionnaire and consists of seven questions. This study employed fuzzy conjoint analysis to measure the level of satisfaction in cleanliness in food premises. This pilot study recruited 30 students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Seremban 3. The student’s perception was represented by the scores calculated based on their degree of similarities and corresponding levels of satisfaction, whereby, only scores with the highest degree of similarity were selected. Furthermore, this study identified the aspects of hygiene that assessed based on the customers’ satisfaction upon visiting the premises. The results indicated that the fuzzy conjoint analysis produced a similar outcome as the statistical mean, thus, was useful for the evaluation of customer satisfaction on the cleanliness of food premises.