Prevalence of Neck Pain among Self Employed Sewing Machine Workers in Northern Gondar, Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Introduction: Neck pain is one the major problem for working population, however it is usually neglected from clinical and research perspective as sewing machine operators are very often utilized for predicting risk factors for neck pain. Therefore considering the fact that there is alarming rise of incidence of neck pain and very little studies had addressed on this area in Ethiopia. Objective: To assess the prevalence of neck pain and its associated factors among sewing machine workers in Gondar, Northwest Ethiopia, 2016 Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted from May 01 to June 01 2016, in Gondar town among self-employed sewing machine workers by using stratified simple random sampling method to get the total samples of 419 participants by single proportion formula. Structured face to face interview questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data on magnitude of work-related neck pain and associated factors. Result: From a total of 419 sewing machine workers included in the study 391(93.3%) were males and 28(6.7%) were females. Most of the respondents 135(32.2%) were in the age group of 30-39 years. The self-reported annual prevalence of work related neck pain among sewing machine workers was 45.8%, with higher prevalence among male workers 46.3%. The multivariate analysis showed that those employees who worked >8 hours per day were 2.6 times more likely to develop neck musculoskeletal disorders than those who had worked 8 hours per day [AOR=2.60, 95% CI: 1.19, 5.66]. Conclusion: Generally, there is high prevalence of neck pain among self-employed sewing machine workers in the study area. As the contributing factors exacerbation of the symptoms of neck pain working above the normal hour is strongly associated with the development of neck pain among sewing machine operators.