Background Integrated textile and garment factories are growing in low and middle-income countries, where workers expose to workplace hazards. However, workers’ health condition in the sector is inadequately investigated.

Objective This study describes the magnitude of registered health problems and associated work-related and personal factors among workers in integrated textile factories in Ethiopia.

Methods Institution-based cross-sectional study design was employed. A one-year recording of worker’s clinical diagnoses (between March 2016 and February 2017) were gathered from the respective factory clinics of three integrated textile factories. Clinical diagnosis data on various diseases were obtained when factory workers visit the clinic for feeling unwell or ill. Sociodemographic characteristics and work-related information were obtained from the factory’s human resource departments. Sociodemographics and clinical diagnosis statuses of 7992 workers were analyzed. The association between diagnoses and workplace factors (textile production, garment production and support process) and personal factors (age, gender and educational status) were studied using logistic regression analyses.

Results The average workers’ age and years of service were 40 years and 11 years respectively. 4778 (60%) of workers, were female. 66% of the workers (n=5276) were diagnosed with one or more types of diseases among the 27,320 clinical diagnoses in total. This caused 16,993 working days absence due to sick leave. Respiratory diseases (34%) and musculoskeletal disorders (29%) were the most prevalent diagnoses; while injuries caused the highest number of days of work absence. Work department, gender and educational status were the variables that were statistically significantly associated with higher prevalence of disease groups.

Conclusions About two-thirds of the integrated textile factory workers were diagnosed with different types of diseases. The textile and garment production department workers were more affected than the support process workers, indicating that some diseases may be related to workplace exposure. Further study should investigate on rare chronic diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, renal diseases, and diabetics based on workers exposure profile.