Public and Occupational Health in Sustainable Agriculture Conference was held on August 23, 2022, at Odense, Denmark. This hybrid conference, co-organized by the ICOH SC Rural Health and the Danish Society of Occupational and Environmental Health, was attended by 103 participants, among them 64 online.
Many points were addressed, and important suggestions were proposed. Agriculture can be regarded globally as a 3-D sector: Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding, with high incidence of accidents and occupational diseases. Challenges and issues faced by the workers in agricultural sector were discussed in the presentations.
- Climate changes and the health effects like heat stress and emerging zoonoses
- Migrant workers health and safety issues
- Psychosocial risks causing depression and suicide
- Farm dust causing occupational respiratory problems
- Musculo skeletal disorders and Pesticide poisoning
Priorities are country/area based, for example occupational health risk from pesticide use is less prominent in EU than for example in India and Uganda. Not only pesticides but other occupational health and safety issues also have to be addressed by policy changes and legislations
To address prevention in the frame of present challenges:
- Harmonize statistics and create the possibility of comparison of data from different countries
- Implement Criteria for Occupational Diseases diagnosis and prevention: use of new ILO guidelines (https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/resources-library/publications/WCMS_836362/lang–en/index.htm)
- Identification of sound denominators
Ways forward:
- Increase Occupational Health surveillance with particular attention to underserved (self-employed; family workers; seasonal workers) and at workers at high risk (youngest; elderly; women). Combat child labour
- Create structures to reach workers according to the Alma Ata declaration (bring occupational health as close as possible to where people live and work): develop the BOHS (Basic Occupational Health) knowledge.
- On base of lessons learned from the pandemic/epidemics (Covid 19, avian influenza; SARS, Q Fever, bovine respiratory disease, etc): creating alert system able to capture early signs of emerging diseases. One Health approach https://www.who.int/health-topics/one-health#tab=tab_1
- Legislation: develop robust measures and precautionary actions: regulation of OHS is a public task and requires active and alert competent authorities/labour Inspectors
Good examples:
- Teaching Basic Occupational Health to primary health care providers in rural area (LDOH course – https://ldoh.net)
- “Farmers’ OH Service” (a tripartite collaboration – workers’ trade unions, employers, and public health system)
Speakers in the Conference were occupational health professionals from various universities and organizations. Prof. Claudio Colosio, Prof. Gert van der Laan, Dr. Erik Joers and Dr. Sashikala Chandrasekar were the speakers from Scientific Committee on Rural Health.