By Mauricio Torres-TovarMedical Doctor, Specialist in Occupational Health – MPH

National Movement for the Health and Social Security Latin America Association of Social Medicine – ALAMES

PHM – Latin America

PEOPLE´S HEALTH ASSEMBLY 3Cape Town - 8 July, 2012

Sub plenary: Fair and Healthy Work

WORK AS SOCIAL DETERMINANT OF HEALTH

“They buy something that I suffer to make. They are eating my flesh”.

Victor, Ivory Coast cocoa farms

“There are more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the transatlantic slave trade”.

Kevin Bales

Relationship between work (employment) and health

Source: Benach J, Muntaner C, Santana V. Employment Conditions and Health Inequalities. Final Report to the WHO. Commission on Social Determinants of Health. 2007.

Health

Living conditions

Relation between living and working conditions

TERRITORY - POPULATION

Housings

Work Places

Local Government

Schools

ChurchesOpen

Market

Health providers

Relation between living and working conditions

TERRITORY - POPULATION

Relations - Processes:Socials

EconomicPoliticalCultural

Social Needs

Determinants

Living and working conditions

Source: Molina, N. Adapted of How does it understand the territory? 2007.

Environment

conditions

Effects of work on health

• Every 15 seconds a worker dies from a work-related accident or disease

• Every 15 seconds 160 workers have an occupational accident

• Every day 6,300 people die as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases

• More than 2.3 million deaths per year

• Over 337 million accidents occur on the job annually

• This situation has a higher human cost and an economic burden estimated at 4 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product each year

Effects of work on health

“We need a major balance of power in employment

relationships. We need a job that is more

just and sustainable.We need fair employment

relationships within an ecological democracy. We need to reduce the

brutalhealth inequalities that

exist today”

Vandana Shiva