RESEARCH ARTICLE


Neck, Wrist and Back Pain Among Solid Waste Collectors: Case Study of a Ghanaian Waste Management Company



I.D. Norman*, J. P. Kretchy, E. Brandford
Department of Biological, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (BEOHS), School of Public Health (SPH), College of Health Sciences (CHS), University of Ghana (UG), Legon


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Creative Commons License
Norman et al.; Licensee Bentham Open

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of BEOHS, SPH, CHS, UG. P. O Box LG 13, Accra, Ghana; Tel: +233244-207760; E-mail: jpkretchy@yahoo.com


Abstract

Prevalence of Neck Wrist and Back pain (NWBP) among solid waste collectors (SWCs) of Zoom Lion Company (ZL) is 44.7%, 48.2% and 73.5% respectively, irrespective of pre-existing periodic pains. It was established that 42/340 (12.4%) SWCs of ZL had neck pain before joining ZL, whilst 298/340 (87.6%) developed neck pain after joining ZL (P-value = 0.001). Again, 32/340 (9.4%) had wrist pain before joining ZL, whilst 308/340 (90.6%) developed wrist pain after joining ZL (P-value = 0.000). Finally, SWCs who had back pain before joining ZL were 71/340 (20.9%) whilst 269/340 (79.1%) developed back pain after joining ZL (P-value = 0.000). These outcomes indicate that SWCs are predisposed to such NWBPs. Zoom Lion, needs to conduct periodic health checks of their staff to determine the degree of NWBPs experienced by their workers and help to relieve the workers of the economic burden of managing the pain.

Keywords: Back, neck, pain, prevalence, wrist, zoom lion.