Article Text

Download PDFPDF

151 National occupational injuries in the philippines: implications for safety programs
Free
  1. Jinky Lu
  1. Institute of Health Policy and Development Studies, National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines Manila, Philippines

Abstract

Background This study aimed to review and assess the prevalence and incidence of occupational injuries in the Philippines. The study collated and analysed available data from national and international sources. Hospital-based and population-based data on types of injury such as motor vehicle crashes, falls, burns, drowning, poisoning, and suicides were included in the study in order to get a comparative statistics for occupationally related injuries compared to overall injuries in the country.

Methods Data collection was done from various agencies, namely, Bureau of Labour and Employment Statistics (BLES) of the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE), Labour Force Survey of National Statistics Office, Occupational Safety and Health Centre (OSHC), National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) under Department of Health (DOH), Overseas Employment Statistics (OES) of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), and International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Results Occupational injuries in the Philippines showed 22,265 cases in 2003, and 47,235 cases in 2007. The manufacturing industries registered the highest number of cases Out of the reported cases of occupational injuries, 178 resulted in death in 2000, and 116 deaths in 2007. Injury occurred at 6 injury cases per 500 full-time workers in 2000. In the following years, it declined to 4 cases per full-time worker in 2003, and 3 cases for every 88 workers in 2007. Superficial injuries and open wounds were the most common type of injuries. Acute poisoning and infections increased by 2.39 times from 2003 to 2007. Other serious injuries were burns, corrosions, scalds, and frostbites and still registering with 2,065 cases in 2007. Fractures also registered at 1,839 cases in 2007. Based on hospital records, there was a total of 9,521 injury cases reported for the first quarter of 2010 in 77 government and private hospitals in the country. The cause of injury mostly occurred on the road (44.4%), and work-related injuries were reported at 7.8%.

Conclusions The records and data show that occupational injuries are prevalent in the Philippines. It is suggested that data collection on occupational injuries be a national scale, and not merely randomised collection of data from small, medium and large industries. Data on occupational injury should also include the agricultural sector, the informal sector, and small enterprises.

  • Occupational Injury
  • Disabling Injuries
  • Accidents
  • Disabilities

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.