Objective: Personal Hygiene is health maintenance activities to sustain one's health. These activities should become personal behavior from childhood from the preventive health perspective. Therefore, determination of knowledge and behavior of elementary school students regarding personal hygiene is aimed in this study.
Material and Method: In 2006 March - May, at Bahcelieveler town in Istanbul at a randomly selected private elementary school and a government elementary school, 4 days training programme is applied on "Health at School and Personal Hygiene". Prior to the training, students are given questionnaires (Form I) which asks students their knowledge and behavioral information on personal hygiene with the method of "Answering under supervision". The schools' physical conditions are questioned through speaking with the school managers face to face applying the questionnaire Form II and the answers were approved through observation.
Results: Out of 257 students who joined this study, the average age was 12.7± 1.5. 49.4% (n:127) were girls and 50.6% (n:130) were boys.
To be able to understand the behavioral activities on hand washing, out of 11 correct suggestions, the points received were 9.2± 2.5 (minimum: 0 - maximum:11)
When these questions were compared between private and government school, there was no significant difference (Mann-Whitney U, z=1.4, p=0.15, z=1.3, p=0.21).
Conclusion: In the elementary school, students' personal hygiene and hand washing behavior have shown that there is further training requirement in this area. Additionally, since the physical and general conditions are known to be related to transform knowledge into behavior, correction of these will improve behavior of children positively.

Personal hygiene School health Hand washing