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A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries

BACKGROUND: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), and the European Union (EU) have encouraged countries to organize occupational health services (OHS) f...

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Autores principales: Rantanen, Jorma, Lehtinen, Suvi, Valenti, Antonio, Iavicoli, Sergio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28982348
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4800-z
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author Rantanen, Jorma
Lehtinen, Suvi
Valenti, Antonio
Iavicoli, Sergio
author_facet Rantanen, Jorma
Lehtinen, Suvi
Valenti, Antonio
Iavicoli, Sergio
author_sort Rantanen, Jorma
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), and the European Union (EU) have encouraged countries to organize occupational health services (OHS) for all working people irrespective of the sector of economy, size of enterprise or mode of employment of the worker. The objective of this study was to survey the status of OHS in a sample of countries from all continents. METHODS: A questionnaire focusing on the main aspects of OHS was developed on the basis of ILO Convention No. 161 and several other questionnaire surveys used in various target groups of OHS. The questionnaire was sent to 58 key informants: ICOH National Secretaries. RESULTS: A total of 49 National Secretaries responded (response rate 84.5%), from countries that employ 70% of the total world labour force. The majority of the respondent countries, 67%, had drawn up an OHS policy and implement it with the help of national occupational safety and health (OSH) authorities, institutes of occupational health or respective bodies, universities, and professional associations. Multidisciplinary expert OHS resources were available in the majority (82%) of countries, but varied widely in quantitative terms. The average OHS coverage of workers was 24.8%, with wide variation between countries. In over two thirds (69%) of the countries, the content of services was mixed, consisting of preventive and curative services, and in 29% preventive only. OHS financing was organized according to a mixed model among 63% and by employers only among 33% of the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of countries have drawn up policies, strategies and programmes for OHS. The infrastructures and institutional and human resources for the implementation of strategies, however, remain insufficient in the majority of countries (implementation gap). Qualitatively, the content and multidisciplinary nature of OHS corresponds to international guidance, but the coverage, comprehensiveness and content of services remain largely incomplete due to a lack of infrastructure and shortage of multiprofessional human resources (capacity gap). The estimated coverage of services in the study group was low; only a quarter of the total employed population (coverage gap). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-017-4800-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-56297972017-10-17 A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries Rantanen, Jorma Lehtinen, Suvi Valenti, Antonio Iavicoli, Sergio BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), and the European Union (EU) have encouraged countries to organize occupational health services (OHS) for all working people irrespective of the sector of economy, size of enterprise or mode of employment of the worker. The objective of this study was to survey the status of OHS in a sample of countries from all continents. METHODS: A questionnaire focusing on the main aspects of OHS was developed on the basis of ILO Convention No. 161 and several other questionnaire surveys used in various target groups of OHS. The questionnaire was sent to 58 key informants: ICOH National Secretaries. RESULTS: A total of 49 National Secretaries responded (response rate 84.5%), from countries that employ 70% of the total world labour force. The majority of the respondent countries, 67%, had drawn up an OHS policy and implement it with the help of national occupational safety and health (OSH) authorities, institutes of occupational health or respective bodies, universities, and professional associations. Multidisciplinary expert OHS resources were available in the majority (82%) of countries, but varied widely in quantitative terms. The average OHS coverage of workers was 24.8%, with wide variation between countries. In over two thirds (69%) of the countries, the content of services was mixed, consisting of preventive and curative services, and in 29% preventive only. OHS financing was organized according to a mixed model among 63% and by employers only among 33% of the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of countries have drawn up policies, strategies and programmes for OHS. The infrastructures and institutional and human resources for the implementation of strategies, however, remain insufficient in the majority of countries (implementation gap). Qualitatively, the content and multidisciplinary nature of OHS corresponds to international guidance, but the coverage, comprehensiveness and content of services remain largely incomplete due to a lack of infrastructure and shortage of multiprofessional human resources (capacity gap). The estimated coverage of services in the study group was low; only a quarter of the total employed population (coverage gap). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-017-4800-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5629797/ /pubmed/28982348 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4800-z Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Rantanen, Jorma
Lehtinen, Suvi
Valenti, Antonio
Iavicoli, Sergio
A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title_full A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title_fullStr A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title_full_unstemmed A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title_short A global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (ICOH) member countries
title_sort global survey on occupational health services in selected international commission on occupational health (icoh) member countries
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28982348
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4800-z
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