Condições higiênico-sanitárias no preparo de refeições em creches comunitárias de Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais

Abstract

The hygiene conditions in meal preparation of community day care centers in Belo Horizonte MG were evaluated. A checklist, based on the current legislation, was elaborated and applied in thirty seven different regional day care centers of the municipality. It was concluded that the day care centers reached a medium level of compliance with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), which shows a deficiency in the hygienic sanitary conditions in the production of meals in these institutions. The major deficiencies in the compliance to the GMP were observed in the groups equipment, furniture and utensils, installations and buildings, handling of residues and human resources, with compliance of the evaluated items below 50%. The manual GMP was found in none of these institutions. The microbiological evaluation of knives, dishcloth, handlers hands and water of the reservoirs of a subsample of nine day care centers presented inadequacies of 77% of the total of the samples. Satisfactory hygienic-sanitary conditions for the dishcloth were not observed in any of the sampled institutions. The day care centers that obtained least compliance to the GMP presented the highest microbiological count in the analyzed samples. The results of this work show that the hygienic sanitary conditions of the day care centers are unsatisfactory as well as the hygiene practices of the handlers. The checklist of the Good Manufacturing Practice was an efficient, quick and low cost tool in the assessment of the hygienic conditions in the day care centers. Keywords: day care centers; checklist of the good manufacturing practice; hygienic