Safety Knowledge and Practices of Consumers and Vendors of Milk Sold in Milk Dispensers and Bars at Embakasi West Sub-county, Nairobi

Abstract

Brucellosis is a significant zoonotic disease that is widespread worldwide and can cause adverse economic losses in case of an outbreak. The prevalence of brucellosis in Sub-Saharan Africa in humans is estimated to vary between 5–55% in different African countries whereas for domestic ruminants it varies from 8–46%. This study examined the consumer and vendor Brucella milk safety knowledge, handling practices and Brucella prevalence in milk sold in milk dispensers and bars in Embakasi West sub-county. A cross sectional study design was used to collect information on demographic characteristics, food safety knowledge, Self-reported Brucellosis infections, Consumers gave information on milk quantities sourced and usage while vendors were asked characteristics of the milk they sell, Microbiological analysis was done on fresh and fermented (mala and yoghurt) milk samples that were collected from the milk vendor machines and milk bars. SPSS analysis was used to do Descriptive statistics for means and proportions while inferential statistics was used for determining associations with chi- square, correlation and regression. A random sample of 229 consumers and 18 vendors from each of the 18-milk sample collection point were interviewed with 37 samples from the 18-sample collection point collected for analysis. Results show that there were more females respondents interviewed (59.8%) than male respondents (40.9%) (P-value=0.0656) for consumers and equal distribution for vendors (males-50% and females – 50%). The proportion of consumer respondents self-employed were 36.2 %, salaried employees 31.4%, students were 14.8% while the remaining percentage were distributed amongst casual labourers (9.2%), house wife (4.8%) and unemployed (3.5%) (P-value =0.685). While half (54.2 %) of the vendors, were self-employed, 41.7% salaried employees, students were 4.2% (p-value =0.365). The income of consumers respondents ranged between KES 1, 000 and KES 50 000 with a half of them (57.6%) earning an income between KES1, 000 and KES10, 000 (p-value =0.045). The vendor respondents, income ranged from KES 1,000 to KES 50,000 with that majority (83.4%) of respondents earning between KES 1000 – KES 20,000 (p-value =0.855). A majority of the consumer respondents (91.7%) had an education level of secondary school and above with only 7.4% having completed primary school education p-value=0.254). Whereas for vendors, 91.7% had completed a minimum secondary school education whereby those with primary school education were 8.3%, secondary school education were 45.8% and 16.7% for each category with college certificate and university degree (p-value =0.0354)...