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Abstract
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Occupational injury is any personal injury, disease or death resulting from an occupational accident sustained on worker in connection with the performance of his or her work. An occupational injury may be any kind of wound, and can range from a minor injury, such as a bruise, scrape or cut, to more severe injuries such as shock, concussion, loss of a limb or an eye, fractured bones, suffocation, poisoning or an illness such as cancer resulting from a single accidental exposure to radiation.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that over 2.3 million annual deaths occur due to occupational accidents and work-related diseases, of which over 350,000 are caused by occupational accidents. Consequently, occupational accidents take lives of nearly 1000 people daily respectively. In 2010, there were over 313 million non-fatal occupational accidents (requiring at least four days of absence from work), meaning that nearly 860,000 people are injured every day globally.
Globally, the ILO estimates that around 4 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), or about US $2.8 trillion, is lost annually in direct and indirect costs owing to occupational accidents and work-related diseases. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of nonfatal occupational injury and illness cases was 112 cases per 10,000 full-time workers in 2012, down from 117 in 2011, in which 34 percent of the injuries and illnesses were musculoskeletal. Textile industry was the second largest sector with a high percentage of work-related injuries, accounting for 28.7%, following the metal industry and machinery in Turkey.
Sub-Saharan Africa appears to have the greatest rate per worker of occupational injuries followed by Asia (excluding China and India) [7]. According to the Central Statistical Agency (CSA) reports, in Ethiopia, the textile industry accounts for 1.7%-2.13% of the major industries and 8%-12.1% of the persons engaged in work [8,9]. There are particularly serious data limitations in the area of work-related diseases and occupational accidents, especially in developing countries. This is due to factors including long latency of many diseases before the symptoms are detected and the weakness in the national capacity for identification, diagnosis and compensation of occupational diseases [2].
The textiles sector poses many hazards that can cause injury to workers, from transport in the workplace, exposure to excessive noise and harmful substances, dangerous large work equipment and plant, risk of slips from a wet working environment, manual handling and working with unsafe machinery, to risks of fire and explosions [10]. In Ethiopia, traditional weavers had poor working conditions and environment, and weavers and owners of the small-scale enterprises were not aware of the benefits of improving working conditions, occupational safety and occupational health [11]. A higher prevalence (36.9%) of occupational injury was observed among textile factory workers in Northern Ethiopia [12].
Language: en |