Diabetes mellitus is a serious long term condition with major impact on the lives and wellbeing, societies in worldwide. Poor disposal practices of devices potentially result in personal injury and injuries to people in the household and general community. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and self -reported practice of insulin injection device disposal and associated factors among diabetes patients in TASH, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 182 adults with diabetes. The study participants were selected through systematic random sampling. Data were collected from March/ 17/2020- May/18/ 2020. Patients were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Data were entered into Epi-data version 4. 6 and exported to SPSS version 25.0 for analysis. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression with crude and adjusted odds ratios along with the 95% confidence interval was computed and interpreted accordingly. Good practice and adequate knowledge were defined based on median calculation; a result above the median value had a good practice and adequate knowledge with P-value < 0.05 was considered to declare a result as statistically significant. About 54% of the participants had inadequate knowledge towards safe insulin injection waste disposal. More than two-thirds (73% %) of respondents had poor practice and 92.3% of respondents did not know how to dispose lancets after use. This study revealed that knowledge and practice of diabetic patients were inadequate and poor towards safe insulin injection waste disposal in study area. Educating patients and awareness creation training on proper insulin injection devices disposal should be considerable.

Keywords: Diabetes, Disposal, Injection device, Knowledge, Practice