Journal: Environmental Contaminants Reviews (ECR)
Author: Abdikadir Ahmed Omar, Md. Sahadat Hossain, Mst. Mahmuda Parvin

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Doi:10.26480/ecr.02.2018.22.26

ABSTRACT
Background: Waste management has been a worldwide issue which most countries are finding the best ways of dealing with. Managing waste improperly poses threat to the health of individuals and the environment. Somalia as a developing country, its communities has been facing with a lot of challenges regarding waste management due to actions towards waste management. Objectives: To examine the knowledge, attitudes and practices of communities on waste management and how their actions have affected their health as well as their environments. Methodology: The study area comprises Karan district Mogadishu-Somalia. Self-administered random sampling method has been used for structured questionnaire and interview (N=150). SPSS V.16 has been used for data analysis. Results: The majority of the respondents 58(38.7%) were said sharps/and needles, while 41(27.3%) were said plastic waste, 31(20.7) were human excreta residues only 20 (13.3%) said none of them. The majority of the respondents 101(67.3%) heard the risks associated with waste while 49(32.7) of the respondents don’t heard risks associated with waste. The majority of the respondents 47(31.3%) were said breading of vector, while 29(19.3%) were said skin disease, 19(12.7%) were said respiratory disease while 55(36.7%) were pollution of soil, air and water sources. Besides, the attitude of the respondents, among the respondents 28(18.7%) were strongly agree that they care about waste management (reduce, reuse, and recycle), 91(60.7%) were agree, 14(9.3%) were not sure, 13(8.7%) were disagree while 4(2.7%) were strongly disagree. Moreover, most of the respondents indicates that 75(50.0%) girls are the persons that deals with the wastes, while 63(42.0%) said mothers are responsible, while only 3(2.0%) said boys and 9(6.0%) said father. Conclusion: The findings revealed that Karan district community have good level of knowledge as well as have positive attitude but their practice towards solid waste management was poor.

KEYWORDS
Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Karan, Mogadishu, Somalia, Waste, Management, Environment