Assessment of safety practice and associated factors among waste handlers in selected government hospitals of Addis Abeba,Ethiopia.
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Date
2019-09
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
BACKGROUND:Health facilities generate different types of wastes characterized as hazardous wastes and most of them are toxic, harmful, carcinogenic, and infectious materials.
Those contaminated wastes may affect health workers, waste handlers and laundry personnel. Medical Waste handlers faced massive exposure to hazardous wastes and occupational accidents as a result of manual handling of waste and working under unfavorable conditions. Waste handlers are often at high risk than health care professionals. In Ethiopia there are very little related studies conducted among medical waste handlers.
OBJECTIVE:The general objective of the study was to assess safety practices and associated factors among selected public hospital waste handler in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2019.
METHOD: An institutional based cross- sectional study was carried out among waste handlers in inselected public hospitals from February up to March 2019. All waste handlers of selected government hospital were included in the study. Data were collected using face to face interview. The collected data had been coded and then entered using Epi-info version 7 software and transferred to SPSS- version22 for analysis. Logstic regression model was carried out for analysis to identify independent predictors at ap-value 0.2.
RESULT: The prevalence of current safety practice among public hospital waste handlers was found to be 44.1% (95% CI; 37.3-51.0). The odds of safety practice among respondents with good knowledge was 4.7 (AOR=4.7; 95% CI: 1.9, 11.5) times higher than those respondents with poor knowledge. The odds of safety practice among participants having good supplies were 6.78(AOR=6.78; 95% CI: 2.2, 20.7) times higher than those respondents with lack supplies.
CONCLUSION: The prevalence of safety practices among hospital waste handlers was higher among those having good knowledge on safety measures and accessed with safety materials.
To sustain good safety practice adequate per-service and in-service traning should be in place to increase their knowledge about safety precautions and availaing safety materials to adherence for safety practice among hospital waste handlers.
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Keywords
Safety Practice, Determinant Factors, Waste Handlers, Public hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.