Assessing levels of solid waste management implementation plans/systems in health facilities in Rubaga Division, Kampala City
Abstract
The demand and need for the establishment and improvement in the levels of implementation of these solid waste management systems in the different institutions in Kampala City is on an increase. This is due to the increase in the numbers of different newly set up medical institutions and new treatment procedures and equipment. These are generating different types of solid waste that impact on environmental health and affect the public health of the community they are located in. These require different solid waste management practices with the capacity to sustain the growing quantities and newly emerging healthcare solid waste. An improvement in the levels of implementation of the solid waste management systems is required dependent on the quality, quantity and hazard risk the solid waste pose to the Kampala Community. The study aimed at assessing the available levels of solid waste management implementation systems/plans in health facilities. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with quantitative data collection methods. Quantitative data was collected amongst 130 health facilities using interviewer administered questionnaires designed in kobo collect and using the kobo collect android application for data entry. The health facilities were selected using a mixtures of stratified and simple random sampling to limit biases. Collected data was downloaded into an Excel sheet, cleaned and analyzed using Excel and exported to Stata MP 14 for uni-variate analysis. A total of 130 health facilities participated in the study (34 clinics, 42 HC IIs, 11HC IIIs, 11HC IVs and 32 general hospitals), more than a half of the facilities were private facilities (84, 66.9%) and the minority being the public facilities (46, 33.1%). All the sampled facilities generated more than one type of solid waste (healthcare waste, food waste, glass paper and plastic). The facilities practiced multiple solid waste management practices, sorting being the most practiced (92.3%), open dumping and open burning (13.85 and 13.1% respectively) being least practiced. Despite the majority of sampled facilities having SWM systems in place and administrative policies and procedures, less acknowledgement and significance is accredited to the importance of proper solid waste management especially in the lower level facilities generating less quantities of solid waste. Hence, more awareness on importance of proper solid waste management should be done in health facilities and enforcements activities to improve of already existing practices and introduction of newly introduced modern day practices to supplement the existing ones.