The National Health and Health Commission is scheduled to hold a “Everything is for the health of the people – our ten years in the past ten years” will be held at 10:00 a.m. on April 25 (Monday). “Themed press conference, the Occupational Health Department of the National Health and Health Commission, the responsible comrades of the Occupational Health Center and experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention will attend. Introduce the main achievements and highlights of occupational health work since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and answer questions from the media. China.com live broadcast, the following is the text record:
Photo: China Net Yang Jia
China Net Reporter:
Nowadays, netizens complain about the work pressure brought by “996”. May I ask whether occupational stress, low back pain and other diseases are considered Occupational disease? In addition, will these diseases be included in the category of occupational diseases in the future? Will the list of occupational diseases be dynamically updated later? thanks.
China CDC Occupational Health Chief Expert Li Tao:
Thank you for your question. Are the occupational stress, low back pain and other diseases you mentioned considered occupational diseases? It is not currently considered an occupational disease, but it is a work-related disease. According to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases, occupational diseases refer to occupational diseases caused by workers of enterprises, institutions and individual economic organizations due to exposure to dust, radioactive substances and other toxic and harmful factors in their occupational activities. The classification and catalogue of occupational diseases are formulated by the health administrative department of the State Council in conjunction with the labor and social security administrative department of the State Council. This is the second and third paragraphs of Article 2 of the Occupational Disease Prevention and Control Law, which is a complete definition.
The classification catalog of occupational diseases was first issued in 1957 by the Ministry of Health after the founding of New China. It clarifies that occupational diseases include occupational poisoning, pneumoconiosis and other 14 kinds of occupational diseases. After that, many adjustments were made, and the number of diseases continued to increase. The current catalogue of occupational diseases was jointly issued by the former National Health and Family Planning Commission and other four departments in 2013. The new catalogue has increased to 132 occupational diseases in 10 categories, of which 4 open clauses have been used to this day.
We see the continuous expansion of occupational disease classification and catalogue diseases, which reflects the focus of occupational disease prevention and protection in different periods. It has played an important role in promoting the responsibility of government supervision and the main responsibility of employers for the prevention and control of occupational diseases, and protecting the rights and interests of workers’ occupational health. We see that occupational stress and low back pain are not currently listed in the classification of occupational diseases, so it can not be regarded as occupational diseases. But occupational stress, as the name suggests, is the mental and psychological stress caused by occupational activities. The low back pain we are talking about now does not refer to general low back pain, but a work-related disease caused by long-term overloading of the low back due to work or poor working methods. Therefore, we say that since it is a work-related disease, the employer should take active measures to prevent the occurrence of these work-related diseases.
Chapter 2, Article 15, Paragraph 5 of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases stipulates that “the equipment, tools, utensils and other facilities of the employer shall meet the requirements of laborers’ physical and mental health. “In fact, it reflects the requirements of the employer. For work-related diseases that are not included in the catalogue, we will increase the popularization of disease prevention knowledge, continue to improve the health literacy and skills of the professional population, and strive to achieve the goal of fewer and no diseases for workers.
With the transformation of the main social contradiction in our country and the full implementation of the Healthy China Strategy, workers’ demands for occupational disease prevention and protection are constantly increasing. At the same time, we must also be soberly aware that our country is still the largest developing country, and we must adhere to the principle of doing our best and doing what we can when revising the classification and catalog of occupational diseases. Therefore, the adjustment of the classification and catalogue of occupational diseases should be in line with the national economic and social development level and the affordability of work-related injury insurance, and scientific and rigorous diagnostic standards should be formulated to enable attribution diagnosis of occupational diseases. According to the national occupational disease prevention and control plan, during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the National Health Commission will work closely with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security to promote the revision of occupational disease classification and catalogues on the basis of full research and demonstration.