Occupational Health Physician Conference 2019 held in Bengaluru

The objective of the conference was to focus on the magnitude of creating a safe and healthy work environment

BR Life SSNMC Hospital and Worksafe Organisation in association with Department of Factories, Boilers, Industrial Safety and Health, Karnataka organised a day long Occupational Health Physician Conference (OHPCON) 2019 recently in Bengaluru. The main objective of this conference was to focus on the magnitude of creating a safe and healthy work environment and the ways it can promote a healthy work culture that can help reduce workplace-related diseases and injuries.

More than 120 doctors from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Hyderabad participated in the event to discuss basic occupational health services, etiquettes of occupational health physicians, recent advances in neurosciences, occupational health practice future etc.

According to researches, close to 160 million cases of work-related diseases are reported to occur globally each year, with 2 million people facing death. This indicates that every day, almost 5,000 workers die as a result of preventable diseases such as COPD, skin diseases, radiation illness, which has been induced or aggravated by a particular exposure in the workplace.

The major occupational diseases/morbidity of concerns in India are silicosis, musculoskeletal injuries, coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, chronic obstructive lung diseases, pesticide poisoning and noise induced hearing loss.

Commenting on the aim of this conference, Dr Kiran Kumar, Unit Head, BR Life SSNMC Hospital said, “The number of occupational injuries and diseases are on the rise in India due to ignorance of what causes them as well as the lack of facilities that can help in recovering from them. Women especially are at higher risk as they dedicate much of their time for work and family and little time to take care of their health. Through such industry meets, doctors get to meet their peers and discuss ways to handle such critical health problems.”

Talking about the event Col Hemraj Singh Parmar, Group CEO, BR Life said, “A healthy workplace always improves the productivity of the employees thereby, leading to the growth of the company. A small step taken by organisations today can initiate the necessary preventive measures towards occupational health hazards. Such measures can improve the lifestyle of each working class and can help in leading a healthy work-life balance.”

Doctors from various corporate organisations such as doctors from Toyota, IBM, Aditya Birla Fashions, UltraTech Cements, AstraZeneca, HAL, BEL, Automotive Axles, Asian Paints, TVS, Grasim industries, Textron, Volvo, Honda Motors participated in OHPCON 2019.