China Institute of Labor Relations and other universities set up undergraduate majors in "Occupational Health Engineering" to fill the gap in the training of occupational disease primary prevention talents train talents
from "source prevention" and "cause prevention"
Pneumoconiosis, benzene poisoning, noise deafness... In my country, tens of thousands of new occupational disease cases are reported every year. Statistics from relevant departments show that occupational hazards in our country are distributed in more than 30 industries including mining, chemical industry, metallurgy, building materials, and chemical industries. Enterprises with occupational hazards account for more than 30% of the total number of enterprises in the country.
The National Occupational Disease Prevention and Control Plan (2016-2020) pointed out that the key to the prevention and treatment of occupational diseases lies in early-stage prevention and source treatment-and my country has a long-term shortage of talents engaged in this work. In 2019, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, the School of Safety Engineering of the China Institute of Labor Relations established the country's first undergraduate major in "Occupational Hygiene Engineering" and enrolled the first national students in the fall of that year. This major combines occupational medicine with occupational health engineering technology and occupational health management, in order to fill the gap in the training of talents for primary prevention of occupational diseases in my country.
Occupational disease report data "tip of the iceberg"
A paint sprayer in a company in Dongguan worked 11 hours a day without good ventilation. After 5 years of work, he began to experience symptoms such as dizziness and weakness. Later, he was diagnosed with occupational chronic mild benzene poisoning and was assessed as a grade 7 disability. This is a case the reporter learned from an occupational health evaluation agency.
According to the "Statistical Bulletin of my country's Health Development in 2019" issued by the National Health Commission, a total of 19,428 new cases of various occupational diseases and 15,947 cases of occupational pneumoconiosis and other respiratory diseases were reported nationwide in 2019. Pneumoconiosis has been the number one occupational disease in my country for many years, accounting for 80% to 90% of all reported cases.
“About 20,000 new cases are reported nationwide each year. This is the number reported after the formal diagnosis of occupational diseases.” Zhao Qiusheng, deputy dean of the School of Safety Engineering of the China Institute of Labor Relations, told reporters, “The situation of occupational diseases in my country may be more serious than this.”
The reason is that the coverage rate of health examinations and the diagnosis rate of occupational diseases in my country are low. Normally, large formal enterprises will conduct health check-ups for employees, while small and medium-sized enterprises with high turnover, large numbers of migrant workers and serious occupational hazards often do not perform health check-ups on employees, or perform occupational health check-ups on some employees to cope with the government. Department inspection. In addition, various enterprises, including large enterprises, generally fail to conduct further occupational disease diagnosis for patients with suspected occupational diseases found in occupational health examinations. Some companies even deliberately terminate labor contracts with suspected occupational disease patients in order to evade responsibility, or have purposeful settlements. Those who have been exposed to occupational hazards who have been working for a certain number of years are approved to terminate their labor contracts, and the next group of employees will be recruited to continue to work with serious occupational hazards.
In addition, the current diagnosis of occupational diseases is mainly based on life-threatening pneumoconiosis, while the diagnosis rate of non-life-threatening occupational diseases such as noise and deafness is even lower. Zhao Qiusheng said that there are more than 1,000 cases of noise deafness reported every year. In fact, how many times more cases can be diagnosed as noise deafness.
The reporter's investigation found that there are still many workers who are unwilling to go for a physical examination because they are afraid of losing their jobs if they are found to be sick.
Primary prevention is the key
Collect relevant information of the enterprise, identify the problem in advance, and make an advance judgment; go to the enterprise site to check the various processes, confirm and refine the judgment; propose engineering rectification opinions to the enterprise based on the judgment, such as adding ventilation facilities and other equipment-this is Ye Bichen, a technician in an occupational health evaluation agency, usually works.
This work can be counted as the content of primary prevention of occupational diseases. "At the beginning of production, hazardous materials are not needed if they are not used. If they must be used, use them as little as possible, minimize the frequency of operations, and strengthen personal protection." Ye Bichen said.
Zhao Qiusheng told reporters that the prevention and control of occupational diseases is a systematic project. In terms of preventive measures, it is necessary to organically integrate medicine, engineering, management and other means, and comprehensively carry out primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of occupational diseases. Primary prevention is to prevent harmful factors from entering the human body. The so-called "source prevention" and "cause prevention" are directly aimed at occupational hazards; secondary prevention refers to preventive occupational health monitoring of people, early detection of disease trends and taking measures Measures are the so-called "morbidity prevention"; the tertiary prevention is to provide rehabilitation treatment to patients with occupational diseases to prevent the disease from getting worse. People are the direct targets of secondary and tertiary prevention.
From a technical point of view, occupational health and occupational medicine can be used to protect the occupational health of workers. The concept of "occupational health" in the world refers to the control or elimination of hazardous factors from the source through engineering and technical means, which is the primary prevention of occupational diseases; while "occupational medicine" is the occupational health monitoring and rehabilitation of workers through medical means. Secondary and tertiary prevention. For many years in our country, "occupational medicine" has been regarded as "occupational health", even as the entire occupational health work, which has weakened the primary prevention of occupational diseases to some extent.
"It is too passive when it comes to secondary and tertiary prevention. For example, pneumoconiosis is irreversible. Primary prevention from the source is the most fundamental." Zhao Qiusheng said.
Ye Bichen bluntly said that from the situation he came into contact with, many companies found third-party occupational health evaluation agencies to make relevant rectifications after the supervised unit issued a fine. Different companies have different attitudes towards occupational health. “Some companies are willing to invest more than 2 million yuan in installing various protective equipment, and some companies are also willing to invest 20,000 yuan.”
Cultivate talents and fill gaps
For a long time, occupational health-related majors in my country are usually located in medical schools, and the majors and disciplines belong to medicine. However, the international occupational health concept emphasizes more engineering control methods. At present, the talents responsible for occupational health management at the enterprise level in our country are either students who graduated from public health or preventive medicine majors in medical colleges and have inherent deficiencies in engineering technologies such as ventilation, dust removal, and noise control; or they are majors in safety engineering. I don’t know anything about occupational medicine, nor do I learn systematically about occupational health engineering courses. It can be said that the training of professional health engineering talents in my country urgently needs to be strengthened.
The China Institute of Labor Relations has conducted a pioneering exploration. As early as 2010, the Safety Engineering Department of China Institute of Labor Relations established the "Safety Engineering Major (Occupational Health Direction)" based on the American industrial hygiene professional training model, and established the occupational health teaching and research section, and established occupational health testing and personal protection experiments. room. At present, there are 7 graduates in this major, Ye Bichen is one of them.
In 2019, the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of the “Occupational Health Engineering” undergraduate program in the China Institute of Labor Relations for the first time in the country. This major organically combines occupational medicine with occupational health engineering technology and occupational health management. On the basis of training students to master the basic knowledge of occupational medicine and the mechanism of pathogenic medicine, it focuses on training students to master the identification, detection and evaluation of occupational hazards, and occupation Knowledge and ability in hazardous engineering control and occupational health management. This year, China University of Mining and Technology and North China Institute of Science and Technology also established this undergraduate program.
Xu Guiqin, director of the Department of Occupational Health Engineering of the China Institute of Labor Relations, introduced to reporters that since the former Occupational Health Department of the State Administration of Work Safety was merged into the National Health Commission in 2019, the National Health Commission has clearly stated that it will vigorously promote occupational health engineering technology in occupational disease prevention. Aspects of the application. It is foreseeable that occupational health engineering talents will be particularly welcomed by the society in the future. Regulatory departments, service organizations, research institutions, especially companies with occupational hazards, will all be areas where students of this major can give full play to their strengths.
Wu Lirong
Wu Lirong