Assessment of Health Care Waste Generation, Its Characterization and Management Practice in Health Centers of Nifas Silk Lafto Sub-City, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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Date
2020-12
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Addis Abeba University
Abstract
Background: The health care waste generation rate highly varies among health providers
due to factors such as the number of patient flow, size of the facility, types of facility, and
service. There is no effective health care waste management practice in most less developed
countries including Ethiopia. There is lack of research which elaborated more detail the main
cause of high proportion of hazardous wastes generation in comparission to general waste,
and mean waste generation per patient flow in studied health facility.
Objective: To assess health care waste generation rate, its characterization and management
practice in health centers of Nifas Silk Lafto Sub-city, Addis Ababa.
Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted from June to July 2020. Ten health centers
from Nifas Silk Lafto Sub-city were selected purposely due to poor waste management, lack
of adequate knowledge and commitment within the community and health provider. Data
was collected by FMHACA Environmental health professionals using observational
checklist and weight scale for period of 7 consecutive days from june 15- 21/2020. Training,
pre-test, and instrument calibration were used to manage data quality. Collected data was
organized and entered in Epi data version 7 and cleaning was done to avoid missing values,
outliers, and other inconsistencies. Cleaned data then exported into SPSS version 20 for
analysis and One way ANOVA test was done.
Results: The daily mean(±SD) healthcare waste generation rate was 5.51±1.455kg/day,
which was equivalent to 0.074±.016kg/pat/day. Out of the total waste generated (27.40%)
was general and (72.60%) was hazardous waste. Most generation was from OPD, which was
72.3kg/week (18.76%).The proportion of sharps (32.02%), infectious (38.85%), pathological
(8.18%), pharmaceutical (20.94%) and general waste (27.4%). Healthcare waste generation
rate varies by number of patient flow with(p<0.001).Nine in10 health centers were practicing
healthcare waste segregation at the point of generation with number of limitations. All health
centers used locally built brick incinerator as a final disposal with some functionality.
Conclusion:The mean waste generation rate per patient flow per health center was relatively
higher than similar study of on-line publication.There was lack of appropriate waste
segregation with different waste catagories at point of generation by most of health centers.
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Keywords
Healthcare waste, healthcare waste management, waste generation and hazardous waste.