Developing Guidelines for Infectious Waste Management with Community Participation in Vichit Subdistrict Municipality

Abstract

The objective of this participatory action research (PAR) was to develop guidelines for infectious waste management with community participation in Vichit Subdistrict Municipality, Phuket. There are the community involvement and opportunities for communities and relevant agencies to brainstorm, analyze, plan and operate. The evaluations were structured observations of infectious waste management in 5 communities and a self-questionnaire of knowledge and practice for infectious waste management of 111 personnel with reliability of Cronbach's alpha coefficient at 0.89. The Data were collected from August to November 2022. Data were analyzed qualitative and paired samples t-test. The results revealed that the guidelines for infectious waste management in the community should consist of 2 parts, (1) the community participatory infectious waste management to clarify the roles and responsibilities for infectious waste management of the local government organizations, health promoting hospital, village health volunteers, patients, relatives, and caregivers and (2) the guidelines for managing infectious waste that separation, storage, transportation, and disposal. The results of the evaluation by the observation that most communities and related agencies operate in accordance with the rules and regulations. However, we found the process of separation and storage in some patients, relatives, and caregivers was incorrect. The result of knowledge and practice related to infectious waste management after using the guidelines, almost population had higher mean scores of knowledges and practice related to infectious waste management significantly. Therefore, the community and related agencies should plan and solve problems together in accordance with the roles, duties, and procedures specified for efficient infectious waste management in the community.