Health-Care Waste Management in Public Sector of Tripura, North-East India: An Observational Study

BACKGROUND: Hospitals generate variety of waste which is hazardous to patients, health workers, community, and environment. Proper health-care waste management (HCWM) requires infrastructure, trained workforce, law and supervision. More than 80% of the population of Tripura depends on the public health-care system but the knowledge and practice of health-care workers regarding HCWM in the public sector of Tripura is not clear. OBJECTIVES: The objective was to assess the knowledge and practice of health-care workers regarding HCWM and to take an account of the existing HCWM facilities in the public sector of Tripura. STUDY DESIGN: This was a facility-based, cross-sectional study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted during 1(st) November 2015 to 16(th) October 2017 among 544 health-care workers working in thirty health institutions chosen by stratified random sampling. Data entry and analysis was performed using SPSS software version 15.0. RESULTS: Overall, 37.68% of the respondents had fair knowledge regarding HCWM, 8.27% received in-service training on HCWM, 66.17% were immunized against hepatitis B and > 90% of the respondents knew about segregation of waste at source but knowledge regarding the use of colored bins for this purpose varied widely across different categories of participants. Housekeeping staff were ignorant about most of these issues. The importance of disinfecting the waste before disposal was known to 83.63% of the workers. Proper HCWM was practiced by 39.15% and segregation of waste at source into colored bins was followed by 23.3% of the respondents. The study revealed both waste management facilities and display of waste management policy as poor. Technical qualification and in-service training were identified as the statistically significant determinants of knowledge and practice of HCWM (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: HCWM scenario including knowledge of health-care workers in Tripura is lacking. Installing proper waste management facilities, raising technical qualification at recruitment and in-service training may improve the situation.