The disposal of used sharps by diabetic patients living at home

Abstract

The disposal of sharps generated in the community has been identified as an area of public health and environmental health concern. While there is a large amount of literature on sharps disposal practices in healthcare settings, the sharps disposal practices of diabetic patients living at home has been poorly documented. This study describes the sharps disposal practices of diabetic patients in South Staffordshire, an English health district. A randomly selected sample of 1,348 adult (aged >or= 16 years) diabetic patients were obtained from the district population-based diabetes register. A self-administered questionnaire was posted to the sample. Non-responders received up to two reminders. A response rate of 91% was achieved. Household containers were used by: 34.1% of respondents for syringes; 35.1% for lancets; and 27.6% for needles. Sharps boxes were the least used method of sharps disposal. Many respondents indicated that they had received only verbal information on how to dispose of their sharps. Those who recalled receiving information were more likely to dispose of their sharps safely. The results of this study suggest that sharps are disposed of in the most convenient manner, into the household waste. This contributes to environmental pollution and places people at risk of physical and psychological trauma.

Disposal of syringes, needles, and lancets used by diabetic patients in Pakistan

“…The results of the present study are consistent with a few studies that investigated sharps disposal by diabetics [15,16]. In studies from Europe, approximately one quarter to one half of the diabetics disposed of their used injection devices in the household garbage [15][16][17], while this proportion was higher in a study from India where approximately 84% of the respondent reported that they disposed of their sharps in the household garbage [18].…”

“…In studies from Europe, approximately one quarter to one half of the diabetics disposed of their used injection devices in the household garbage [15][16][17], while this proportion was higher in a study from India where approximately 84% of the respondent reported that they disposed of their sharps in the household garbage [18]. Thus, the situation in our setting is more similar to that in India, where the population characteristics are more comparable to the Pakistani population.…”

Practices related to sharps disposal among diabetic patients in Sri Lanka

“…The findings are similar to other studies done in this regard [9–15]. Such unsafe practices pose a major threat to others through the possibility of needle stick injuries [12, 14]. Similar to other studies, the results show that most of the patients; 98% re-capped and re-used the same needle repeatedly [3, 15].…”

Safe Syringe Disposal is Related to Safe Syringe Access among HIV-positive Injection Drug Users

“…Though causality cannot be established, we hypothesize that the association of living in the area longer and visiting an SEP with safe disposal may reflect greater familiarity with local services. In keeping with studies of syringe disposal among diabetics that identified convenience as the major barrier to proper disposal (Olowokure, Duggal, & Armitage, 2003), our results suggest that familiarity with local services-and thus awareness of convenient disposal options-may improve disposal practices. One-third of our participants handled syringes safely, further supporting a substantial overlap between these two behaviors.…”