Awareness on Medical Waste Management and Occupational Health Safety among the Employees Related to Medical Services atUpazila Level in Bangladesh

The proper knowledge in waste management is a vital requirement the proper waste management. Whereas the number ofHealthcare Establishments (HCEs) is increasing day by day at upazila level, it is necessary to evaluate the level of knowledge onmedical waste management of the employee related to medical services. It is also necessary to find the occupational health safetypractices among the employees. In this study, Singra Upazila of Natore district in Rajshahi division has been selected to achievethe objectives of the study. A total 40 numbers of HCEs was selected in the study area. To find the level of knowledge in MedicalWaste Management (MWM) practices, a questionnaire survey was conducted among the employees of the selected HCEs. Thequestionnaire also helped to find the occupational health safety practice and the difficulties faced by the employees. After gettingall the data from field observation and questionnaire survey, the results are accumulated by using SPSS software. After that,results were presented by tables and bar charts. It was found that, hands on training played an important role in both knowledgelevel of employees and occupational health safety practices. It was also found that all the non-government employees are nontrained.On the other hand, most of government employees are trained and only a few were non-trained. So, the comparisonbetween government and non-government can consider as the comparison between trained and non-trained employee. Theknowledge level of government HCE‟s employees found higher than the private HCE‟s employees. The government HCE‟semployees were also more aware about occupational health safety practices. So, they had less injuries the private HCE‟semployees. Workers were facing different types of difficulties as well as occupational health hazard in both types of HCEs.Finally it was recommended that, to run a proper waste management system, the employees will need hands on training on it.

Keywords:

Medical Waste , Hazardous waste , Rural Health Care , Awareness , Knowledge , Occupational health safety