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
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 6
First Page: 59
Last Page: 66
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-6-59
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501306010059
Article History:
Received Date: 16/06/2013Revision Received Date: 28/07/2013
Acceptance Date: 29/07/2013
Electronic publication date: 1/11/2013
Collection year: 2013
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.
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.