A non-profit Workers’ Health Centre, established in 1984 by Hong Kong medical, rehabilitation and occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, is scaling up efforts to prevent occupational illnesses on China’s mainland through workplace assessments and trainings for factory workers and management staff.

According to China Projects Manager, Anna Li, this year will see new programmes on “participatory OHS prevention” for migrant workers at risk of contracting silicosis in Guangdong and Hunan, together with capacity building for local authorities charged with prevention of accidents and rehabilitation of injured workers, and an initiative to foster self-help groups for injured workers.

In Hong Kong, the Workers Health Centre provides OHS and community rehabilitation services with funding support from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the Community Chest and the government of the Special Administrative Region.

In 2003, it began to develop partnerships with mainland government agencies and helped to establish an Occupational Health and Rehabilitation Resource Centre in Guangdong Province. This was followed in 2005 by a “workers health service station” (东港工人健康服务站) in Guangzhou’s Pan Yu District (番禺区). The Hong Kong group has since also begun working in Hunan, where it is encouraging local government partners to develop centres similar to those established in Guangdong

Collaboration with Guangdong partners has included piloting accident prevention and OHS training in factories in the Pearl Delta region. Expert teams visited factories to carry out risk assessments, and followed this up with OHS trainings for managers and front-line staff in six factories, using train-the-trainer methods for factories with a large workforce.

Anna Li stresses that the aim is to find practical and low-cost methods to improve safety. This, she says, requires the active participation and initiative of shop floor workers, both in identifying hazards in their immediate working environment and in taking appropriate precautions.

Best practice, says Li, would be to establish permanent OHS factory committees with worker participation. This has happened in one of the factories where accident prevention training has been given, and a second factory is in the process of establishing a similar committee.

This year the prevention campaign will focus on diseases that affect the lungs, such as pneumoconiosis and silicosis, with activities planned in four factories this year. Although these illnesses are commonly associated with mining, Li explains that workers polishing gemstones in jewelry workshops are also at risk, as are workers in sectors such as paper and furniture making.

Joining rehabilitation dots

At the same time, the Workers Health Centre is promoting a “case management” rehabilitation model for workers who have suffered injury or serious illness.

China, says Li, has the clinical skills to deal with occupational illness and injury, but available services are not well coordinated and migrant workers, far from their homes, “don’t know how to get appropriate resources from society.”

The Worker’s Health Centre is now working to better connect those resources.

Guandong’s Occupational Health and Rehabilitation Resource Centre and a similiar centre modeled on it in Hunan Province, are being giving practical assistance in developing procedures to coordinate counseling, medical services, community based rehabilitation services, self-help care and help with re-training and re-employment opportunities.

More than 80 rehabilitation workers and officials from related departments in Hunan traveled to Hong Kong last October to attend a case management training course and a second workshop took place in Hong Kong in January.

Funding for the Hong Kong Workers’ Health Centre mainland projects is provided by several private donors, including Oxfam Hong Kong, Partners for Community Development and the HSBC Foundation.

Industrial illness, injury rising

Chinese government sources suggest that occupational illness and injury are continuing to rise in China.

A national survey on disability, whose preliminary results were published at the end of last year, identified industrial and road traffic accidents as a major cause of a rise in the number of people with disabilities.

Nearly 700,000 Chinese people are disabled in industrial accidents each year, according to a People’s Daily online report (December 1, 2006).

In July 2006, a senior official with China’s Centre for Disease Control, Li Tao (李淘), told the Workers Daily (July 16, 2006) that occupational illness and injury costs China CNY 110 billion (USD 12.5 billion) each year.

By the end of 2005, he said, more than 665,043 people were suffering from chronic occupational illness, of whom fully 606,891 were pneumoconiosis patients. Each year sees 10,000 new pneumoconiosis cases.

Hong Kong Workers Health Centre: www.hkwhc.org.hk (Content mainly in Chinese with English summaries)

Report by Nick Young, March 1, 2007