The Process of Community Infectious Waste Management by Tambon Health Assembly in Khok Samran Sub-District, Ban Haet District, Khon Kaen Province

Abstract

This action research aimed to study the development of the process of infectious waste management by Tambon Health Assembly at Khok Samran sub-district, Ban Haet district, Khon Kaen province. Participants were purposively selected form 2 target groups as: 1) 56 members of Tambon Health Assembly form three sectors including politics, academia and civil society; and 2) 32 patient caregivers who involved in the community's treatment of infectious trash. Quantitative data were collected by using questionnaires and analyzed by descriptive statistics and compared before and after development using Wilcoxon sign rank test, while qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis.

The results showed that the process of infectious waste management had eight steps including: 1) Situation analysis; 2) Community planning; 3) Knowledge; 4) Awareness; 5) Health assembly; 6) Follow-up; 7) Evaluation; and 8) Lesson learned. The process had been evaluated by the participants illustrating that they had significantly increased their knowledge, satisfaction and participation in infectious waste management (p<0.05).

Key success factors for this study had 4 factors called “SPEC” which consisted of:
1) Structure of the Tambon Health Assembly (S); 2) Participation in community infectious waste management (P); 3) Evaluation (E); and 4) Communication of waste management in the community (C). These could lead to be sustainable community development for Tambon infectious waste management.