Background: Hygienic behavior is the complex issue which is the impact of disease burden due to inadequate, unsafe water and lack of sanitation; a huge burden in developing countries. Globally, more than 10 million children die annually from causes that affect daily life, child’s health and well-being of their mothers. These are causing many people; children in particular, to fall ill or even die. Every week approximately, 31,000 in low-income countries die from diarrheal diseases which are estimated to be 4,500 deaths occur daily. Hygiene and sanitation in schools are important, as it allows children to learn about hygiene at a receptive age, as well as having immediate and long term health benefits. Poor hygiene behavior remains high risk behavior, increasingly responsible for high water and sanitation related diseases among primary school going children like, gastrointestinal infections have been associated with primary schools.

Methods: .The study was conducted in Shey Bench district by seven data collectors under six supervisors from January 1-30/2019. The questionnaire was checked for completeness, cleaned manually and entered into Epi- Data version 4.2. Then the data were transferred in to SPSS version 21.0 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics were carried out. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to identify factors influencing hygiene behavior.

 Result: Good hygienic behavior is only 34.1. Female students (AOR=2.95), having hygiene and sanitation club in the school (AOR=0.287), Poor knowledge about hand washing (AOR=0.148), lack availability of hand washing facility (AOR=0.541), separated toilet for male and female (AOR=2.94) and membership (AOR=1.75) were significantly associated with hygienic behavior.

Conclusion: Generally, the hygienic behavior is low which needs attention from different responsible body. The determinant factors of hygienic behavior are predisposing factors, enabling factors and motivating or supporting factors with predictors of  poor knowledge on hand washing, lack of availability of hand washing facility, and  hygiene and sanitation club.

 

Keywords: School children, Hygiene behavior, Shey-Bench