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Title Handling of fresh vegetables: knowledge, hygienic behavior of vendors, public health in Maputo markets, Mozambique
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/10451/44320
Date 2020
Author(s) Salamandane, Catia; Fonseca, Filipa; Afonso, Sónia; Lobo, Maria Luisa; Antunes, Francisco; Matos, Olga
Abstract © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). - In developing countries, markets are the main supply of horticultural products to populations, but this can pose a public health challenge due to the risk of the fecal-oral transmission of gut pathogens. This transmission is strongly associated with inadequate public sanitation or low standards of personal and domestic hygiene, and their prevalence can cause gastrointestinal diseases, which are the third leading cause of death in Mozambique. This study aims at assessing the risk for public health of horticultural products supply chain, from the farmers-vendors to the consumers, in municipal markets in Maputo-City, Mozambique. Surveys (75) were conducted on vendors and an observational analysis was performed in the markets under study. The results showed that 62% of the vendors had access to water from boreholes or artisanal sources and the issue 'access to water' was significantly di erent between markets (p = 0.004). Of the vendors who wash their products (53.3%), only 7.5% use tap-water for this purpose, with the di erence in attitudes being statistically significant between vendors in the markets (p = 0.035). The majority (60.4%) said that vegetables and fruits can cause diseases due to pesticides and only 31.3% believe that the diseases may be related to poor hygiene. Despite the vendors' low knowledge of Good Hygiene Practices (GHP), we noticed that women have better practical assimilation of GHP when compared to men (p = 0.008). Although Maputo's markets are struggling to achieve quality hygiene standards in a reliable and sustainable manner, their resources are limited and significantly di erent (p = 0.044) from market to market, and this problem remains a concern for the public-health authorities of the city. In conclusion, the provision of adequate drinking water and sewage disposal systems, together with education for health of vendors, can reduce the risk of contamination of fresh food by the more common organisms causing diarrhea in children, including intestinal parasites. - This research was funded by Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), with scholarship reference SFRH/BD/135355/2017 from TropikMan doctoral program, Lisboa, Portugal. It also had the partial support of Instituto de Saúde Ambiental (ISAMB), Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. - info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Subject(s) Fresh vegetables; Gastrointestinal diseases; Public-health; Vendors; Behavior; Maputo, Mozambique
Language eng
Publisher MDPI
Relation SFRH/BD/135355/2017; https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
Type of publication article
Rights openAccess; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Identifier Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 6302; 1661-7827; 10.3390/ijerph17176302; 1660-4601
Repository Lissabon - University of Lissabon
Added to C-A: 2021-12-20;16:30:00