Abstract
Background
Traditional initiation schools remain a significant cultural practice in various African countries, yet are often associated with many preventable, environmental health related morbidity and mortality cases.
Introduction
Although environmental health practitioners (EHPs) have a legal requirement to ensure environmental conditions that are safe, legislative ambiguities and traditional protocols often prevent them from performing their routine inspections and enforcing compliance with necessary environmental requirements. The enforcement gap affects public health, allowing preventable hazardous conditions to remain undetected.
Aim
The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and perceptions of EHPs regarding traditional initiation schools in Mpumalanga.
Results
The study used a quantitative cross-sectional design (n=96). The findings of the study showed that EHPs demonstrated moderate to high levels of knowledge regarding their roles in traditional initiation schools, although, critical gaps could be observed in cultural engagement, legal literacy, and intersectoral collaborations. Knowledge scores were significantly associated with formal training (p= 0.004), years of experience (p=0.002), and frequency of inspections (p= 0.011). A moderate positive relationship between could be observed between knowledge and perception scores (r = 0.46, p < 0.001), which suggested that higher knowledge levels were associated with more informed perceptions. The findings also showed that perception scores were significantly influenced by the knowledge levels of EHPs (p < 0.001), religious influences (p= 0.018), and perceived health risks (p= 0.006). This indicated that both contextual and experiential factors may influence the effectiveness of EHPs in traditional initiation schools.
Conclusion
The study concluded that environmental health within initiation schools can be strengthened through development and enforcement of context-specific environmental health guidelines, formalisation of a clear regulatory authority for EHPs, and implementation of targeted context specific training programs.