ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION PRACTICES AMONG RURAL COMMUNITY

Introduction: Proper sanitation promotes health, improves the quality of the environment and thus, the quality of life in a community. Sanitation refers to the safe collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of human wastes. It is a fundamental health service without which there cannot be any improvement in the state of community health. It is both public and private element, and the individuals hygiene can affect the whole community. Improving the sanitation within a community leads to an improvement in health. Thus, sanitation is an integral component of environmental protection, which ensures a productive life.

Methodology: In this pre-experimental study, 200 households of rural community in the age group of 20-60 years were selected as the samples for the study by using total enumeration sampling technique. The data was collected by using observational checklist on environmental sanitation. Data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. SPSS-17 software was used and P values less than 0.05 were considered significant.

Result: In the pre test [mean=12.2, SD=2.2], majority of the rural community had poor environmental sanitation practices and in the post test [mean =25.9, SD=3.0], majority of the rural community had good environmental sanitation practices.

Discussion: The result shows that there was improvement in practices regarding environmental sanitation practices after implementation of HEALTH EDUCATIONon environmental sanitation practices which was calculated at 0.05 level of significance. So, it is concluded that the HEALTH EDUCATION on environmental sanitation practices has an effect on to improve poor and average environment sanitation practices.