Awareness of occupational health hazards and the practice of universal safety precautions among mortuary workers in South West Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Mortuary workers face hazards at work such as infectious diseases, chemical and psychosocial hazards among others. If workers are to participate in activities to safeguard their health, they must be aware of the risks at work. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to assess the awareness of occupational health hazards and to determine their practice of universal safety precautions. METHODS: A descriptive, cross sectional study was carried out among all the mortuary workers in teaching hospitals in South West Nigeria. The study material was a self administered questionnaire used for Data collection between March and May 2008. Data was analyzed by EPI-INFO 2002. The Chi-square test was used for statistical association with a p-value of 0.05. RESULTS: A total of 76 mortuary workers was surveyed with a mean age of 38.2 yrs. They were mostly male (92%). Forty-five (59.2%) of the respondents were aware of hazards at work. The hazards identified were HIV/AIDS (97.7%), tuberculosis (82%) and formalin related morbidity. 14 (18.4%) rated the risk faced at work as moderate/high risk. Only 36.8% always used face masks. About 40 (53.3%) had received at least one dose of Hepatitis B vaccine. There was no association between awareness of hazards and practice of universal safety precautions CONCLUSION: The awareness of occupational hazards among the workers was fair while the practice of universal safety precautions was suboptimal. There is a need for periodic training programmes on occupational hazards as well as the vaccination of all workers with three doses of Hepatitis B Vaccine.