Assessment of healthcare waste management practices and associated factors in Addis Ababa City Administration Public Health Facilities

BACKGROUND: Healthcare waste management is very important due to its hazardous nature that can cause risk to human health and the environment. In developing countries, healthcare waste has not received much attention and has been disposed of together with municipal waste. The aim of the study was to assess the healthcare waste management practices in Addis Ababa City Administration Public Health Facilities. METHODS: An institutional-based cross-sectional design was used for the study at Addis Ababa city 15 Public health centres and 3 hospitals. Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires distributed to 636 randomly selected healthcare waste handlers and managers. Observational check list also used. The data were entered into the EPI- INFO version TM 7 and exported to IBM SPSS 20 for analysis. Both descriptive and analytic statistics were employed. RESULTS: Among the respondents, 358 (90.86%) from health centres and 96.38% (133) from hospitals indicated that their facilities had separate containers for hazardous and non-hazardous waste however, 61 (15.48%) from health centres and 29 (21.01%) from hospitals indicated that healthcare waste containers were not clearly marked or labelled. The study found that the main forms of on-site treatment of healthcare waste for health centres and hospitals before disposal were burning. Manager respondents from the health centres 65 (92.86%), 64 (91.43%) and from hospitals 31 (91.18%), 30 (88.24%) indicated that healthcare waste handlers were used protective clothing when handling waste and were provided with protective clothing when handling healthcare waste respectively. CONCLUSION: In this study healthcare waste management among healthcare waste handlers and healthcare facility managers were not getting full attention. Collection of healthcare waste were not done regularly, containers were not clearly marked and were not located in appropriate areas where they might be needed. Support healthcare waste handlers by training help to improve their knowledge, attitude and practice.