You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Challenges to improving occupational health in China
  1. Huacheng Ning1,2,
  2. Yao Zhou1,
  3. Ziwen Zhou1,
  4. Sixiang Cheng3,
  5. Ruixue Huang1,
  6. Huacheng Ning2,
  7. Ruixue Huang1
  1. 1 Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, China
  2. 2 Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, China
  3. 3 Department of social Medicine and Health Management, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ruixue Huang, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha 410078, China; huangruixue{at}csu.edu.cn

https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2017-104656

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.

    In January 2017 the Chinese government released the National Occupational Preventative and Treatment Plan, with the aim of further protecting occupational health and fulfilling the promise of a healthy China. The plan addresses the urgent need to promote occupational health. According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) report series, over 830 000 cases of occupational disease have been reported in the past three decades, of which 80% were pneumoconiosis (90% of such cases affected internal migrant workers); the number has risen gradually every year.1 Rough economic estimates suggest that the direct annual economic loss attributable to occupational diseases is about 100 billion RMB (Yuan), with the indirect economic loss being about 200 billion Yuan.2 However, as only 30% of the population is subjected to occupational health surveillance, it is likely that the number of occupational disease cases is greatly underestimated. Therefore, if China wishes to fulfil the dream of a healthy population, major challenges must be addressed.

    The first challenge is the absence of protection for internal migrant workers. China …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors HN proposed the idea; YZ, ZZ and SC reviewed the relative literature; RH and HN wrote the initial version; RH critically revised the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.