Anthropology of Health and Occupational
Hazard
Occupational health aims at the
promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social
well being of worker in all occupations and not mere absence of disease or
infirmity (WHO, 1948).
In India the traditional public health
concerns likes communicable diseases, malnutrition, poor environmental
sanitation and reproductive health care get emphasis and priorities in the
health policy. Recent industrialization and globalization are changing the
occupational morbidity drastically, new pathologies like cancers, stress, AIDS,
geriatrics, psychological disorders and heart diseases are on rise. This
transition poses new challenges to health care system with new concepts of
environmental legislation, ethical issues, new safety regulations, insurance
and high costs of healthcare.
Traditionally labor-oriented markets
are changing towards more automation and mechanization, at the same time
general awareness about occupational safety, occupational and environmental
hazard is limited in the society. With these structural changes the workers in
low resources settings are more likely to be affected by the dangers of high
technology than their counterparts in developed countries. Due to lack of
education, lack of awareness about the hazards of their occupations, general
backwardness in sanitation, poor nutrition and proneness to epidemics aggravate
their health hazards from work environment.
In our country local medievalism and
multinational modernism exist side by side, so the research on incidence,
prevalence and prevention will have to address the needs in terms of future
occupational health policy in India.
The research approaches need to balance between understanding the modern
industrial exposures and health risks of traditional sectors like Textile and
small scale industries. So far not much attention has been drawn about the
plight of Textile Workers and those working in several unorganized sectors.
Being exposed to extreme dusty environmental conditions, chemical and poisons
and mechanical hazards much attention is needed to reduce the accidents and diseases in these groups. Despite proper evidence from
epidemiological data or information systems, meager information is available
from small-scale and community based studies, which may be used for exploratory
understanding of the occupation health situation in India.
Occupational health programmes
basically aim to protect the health of employees. Unfortunately, in India
these programmes are not given due importance. The National Commission on Labour
had lamented: The loss of life through the slow and agonising process of an
occupational disease may not stir the community as much as it would in other
countries, although to the near ones it is a tragic occurrence. Relief gets
organized soon after the events but the prevention, which is the most
important component itself, gets side-tracked.