Self-Assessment of Hygiene Practices towards Predictive and Preventive Medicine Intervention: A Case Study of University Students in Ghana

INTRODUCTION: Personal hygiene is essential to the current paradigm shift towards predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine, which enables the prediction and prevention of infectious disease outbreaks. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper was to evaluate the personal hygiene practices among university students aiming at providing a basis for preventive and predictive medical interventions and to make future efforts improve target interventions for young people. METHODS: The study was conducted using a cross-sectional study. Validated instruments that related personal hygiene practices were used to obtain quantitative data from 412 tertiary students from seven universities in Accra, Ghana. The resulting data were analyzed with IBM-SPSS, version 23. RESULTS: There were more female respondents (54.4%) in the study than male respondents (45.6%). Respondents between the age group of 19-24 years constituted majority (59.7%) of the respondents in the study. Respondents from urban areas exhibited good hygiene practice compared to those from urban residences. There was a significant association between residence and hygiene practice (χ(2)=17.8, P≤0.001). We also observed that those respondents within the upper class in society had a poor hygiene practice, compared to the Lower Class and Middle Class respondents. Lack of education (63.1%) was observed as the main barrier to personal hygiene among the respondents. Future of the society depends on the health of its youth. CONCLUSION: A significant number of students are not actively practicing good hygiene. There is a need for deployment of preventive medicine interventions targeted at young people. It calls for improvement in methods of hygiene education for young people in tertiary institutions and the inclusion of hygiene in school curricula.