الفهرس 
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Abstract
S
afe food is necessary to ensure a good and healthy life and, therefore, to build a healthy community. Food becomes unsafe when it is exposed to one or more of the causes of contamination sources such as biological, chemical, or physical hazards that may be introduced into the food supply at any time during preparing, storing, and serving food. Unsafe food can cause a number of diseases, mainly affecting young children because of their immature immune systems, which can be fatal in some cases. (Pettoello-Mantovani, et al., 2021).
Because mothers are the last line of defense against foodborne infections, they must take several precautions to ensure food safety at home. Mothers should have adequate awareness and knowledge about safe and unsafe foods to protect their children from foodborne illness. The community health nurse also plays a vital role in the community and has a hand in increasing mothers’ awareness of their children’s health. (El Haddad, et al., 2020).
The aim of this study was to:
Assess mothers’ role in providing safe food for their children under five years through:
1- Assessing mothers’ knowledge about the safe food for their children under five years.
2- Assessing mothers’ practice toward preparing of safe food for their children under five years.
3- Assessing health problems of the children under five years.
Research questions:
1- Is there a relation between socio demographic characteristic of the mothers and knowledge about safe food for their children under five years?
2- Is there a relation between socio demographic characteristic of the mothers and the practice regarding safe food for their children under five years?
3- Is there a relation between mothers’ knowledge and their practice regarding providing safe food for their children under five years?
Subjects and Methods
Research Design
A descriptive analytical research design was utilized in this study to conduct the study aim.
Setting:
The study was conducted at General Medical Center (family medicine center), in Tanta which serve most of mothers and children at Al Gharbiya- Governorate. This center serves large number of the study target population and in different Scio-demographic characteristics.
Subjects:
Purposeful sample was used. The average number of total attended mothers at immunization clinic and family planning clinic at General Medical Center in Tanta equal 1200 per month, the sample size 10% from the total number of mothers equal 120 mother.
Tools of data collection
Two tools were used in this study for data collection.
Tool І: Interview questionnaire form was designed by the investigator and written in simple Arabic language based on scientific literature review to assess data about the following.
Part one: Mothers’ socio-demographic characteristics.
Part two: Children characteristics.
Part three: Mothers’ General knowledge about safe food.
A- Mothers’ knowledge about unhealthy habits that lead to food contamination.
B- Mothers’ knowledge about healthy habits that maintain food safety.
Part four: Kitchen hygiene and environment.
Part five: Mothers’ Practice regarding safe food.
Part six: Health problems of children under five years’ checklist.
Tool ІI: Hand washing’ checklist.
Pilot Study
A pilot study was conducted on 10% of total sample of mothers to test availability of study sample (12 mothers) and clarity of the study tools. The pilot has also served to estimate the time needed for each subject to fill in the questions. According to the results of the pilot, some corrections and omissions of items were performed as needed. They were excluded in the main study subjects during the actual collection of data. The process of pilot study took two weeks (from 6 Mar to 20 Mar) in Mar. 2021.
The study results can be summarized as follows:
1- Regarding socio-demographic characteristics of the mothers, 46.6% of mothers aged 30 and older, 98.3% of mothers were married, 35% of them had a secondary education, 74.2% of mothers were not working, 57.5% suffered from insufficient income (the family income was not enough), 55.8% of mothers lived in rural areas, and showed that 100% of mothers had only one child between the ages of 1 year and under five years.
2- Concerning to children’ characteristics, 52.5% of children under five years were male, 37.5% of the children aged four years and 37.5% of them were the third child in their family.
3- Regarding mothers’ total score of the knowledge and practice, 46.7% had satisfactory level of knowledge about safe and unsafe food, and 15.8% of them have done correctly practice level toward preparing of safe food for their children under five years.
4- Concerning kitchen environment, 54.2% of the studied mothers have a suitable kitchen environment, while 45.8% of them have unsuitable kitchen environment.
5- Regarding health problems of the children under five years, 75.8% of children of the studied mothers suffering from heart palpitation and excessive sweating when playing for a short time, and 70.8% of them complain of abdominal pain.
6- Regarding children under five years old’ total score of health problems related to unsafe food, 25% of them suffered from health problems.
7- Regarding mother’s reported practice regarding hand washing, that 81.7% of the studied mothers hadn’t done hand washing’ technique correctly, while 18.35% of them had done it correctly.
8- There was a statistically significant difference between mothers’ characteristics data and their knowledge about safe and unsafe food.
9- There was a highly statistically significant difference between the characteristics of mothers and their practice regarding safe food for their children under five years, except for social status, in which there was no statistically significant difference.
10- There was a positive correlation between mothers’ knowledge and their practice regarding providing safe food for their children under five years.