This topic focuses on the most essential activities for workers’ health performed by primary and community health care. It includes so-called Basic Occupational Health Services, the essential care on occupational safety and health for the 85 % of all workers in the world who have no access to care provided by expert-based or comprehensive Occupational Health Services. Often the term Basic Occupational Health Services is used for systematic activities performed by primary or community health care professionals or centers. Such systematic activities are in development in countries such as Thailand, Iran, Indonesia, India, Türkiye, and Brazil. In other countries, Public Health organizations are performing a variety of activities in this field such as for migrant workers in the USA. In many European countries primary healthcare professionals such as family physicians, and not to forget many clinicians are increasingly active in workers’ health such as in the UK, Italy, and Netherlands. New BOHS forms are tested successfully such as small specialized occupational health clinics with reach-out activities in high-risk precarious working areas in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In India and Malaysia, a series of workshops were given for healthcare professionals to develop knowledge and basic skills in workplace hazard identification, assessment, and control.
The LDOH Foundation supports the development of various basic occupational health services and more broadly the efforts of primary and community health care, and of clinicians, by co-organizing symposiums and sessions on this topic such as in international ICOH and WONCA congresses and meetings. In October 2022, we published a freely accessible BOHS database with descriptions of 189 publications on this topic, inclusive of bibliographic information, and links to the full publications or abstracts. A scientific article has been submitted. We developed this repository in close collaboration with Suvarna Moti, a member of the Indian Association of Occupational Health.
