Assessment of Factors Associated with Occupational Injuries among Municipal Solid Waste Workers? in Kigali City, Rwanda, 2016

Municipal solid waste workers are exposed to a number of pathogens which originates from waste and its composition. Though in developing countries the occupational injuries and health hazards associated with Municipal solid waste have been minimized, the risks are still high in developing countries like Rwanda where there is in adequate understanding of the risk magnitude. This cross sectional study was conducted to assess the factors associated with occupational injuries among the municipal solid waste workers in Kigali City, Rwanda. A total of 239 workers were taken as study sample and data was collected through questionnaire and by use of observational checklists. The quantitative data from the structured questionnaire and observational checklists were coded and a master sheet prepared. The cleaned data was exported into SPSS software program for further analysis. Analysis was conducted using stata, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were computed to determine statistical association between the outcome variable and independent variables using Odds Ration, significant of statistical association were tested using 95 % confidence interval (CI) and p value (less than 0.05). The total number of workers that had sustained occupational injuries were 123 (51.5 % 95 % C. I = 44.94 57.96). The most of injuries occurred on the upper arm with occurrence of 43 (18 % 95 % C. I = 13.34 - 23.46) followed by the neck and shoulder with occurrence rate of 36 (15.1 % 95 % C. I = 10.78 - 20.24) and 24 (10 % 95 % C. I = 06.54 - 14.57) respectively. Concerning the type of injuries that occurred, cuts were the most high with 62 (25.9 % 95 % C. I = 20.51 - 31.99) followed by puncture 44 (18.4 % 95 % C. I = 13.71 - 23.92) with fracture having 6 (2.5 % 95 % C. I = 00.93 - 05.38) and the slips and fall being the list with 4 (1.7 % 95 % C. I = 00.45 - 04.23). Some of the factors have been revealed to be more influential than others in facilitating the occurrence of injuries were low level of education with no education with (odd ratio OR=1.000), Primary education (OR = 1.064019, 95 % CI 0.5399431, 2.09677) marital status especially single (OR = 7.136472, 95 % CI 0.7820925, 65.11919), male gender (OR = 1.298817, 95 % CI 0.6536932, 2.580607), having extra work (OR = 1.000), working under pressure (OR = 7.136472, 95 % CI 0.7820925, 65.11919), drinking alcohol at work (OR = 1.309791, 95 % CI 0.6467055, 2.652758). The government institutions and private sector involved in municipal solid waste management should set up measures to prevent the occurrence of occupational injuries through controlling the associated factors reveled by this study.