NEWSLETTER International Commission on Commission Internationale de Occupational Health - ICOH la Santé au Travail - CIST Volume 15, Number 1 April 2017 I In this number I Message from the President 1 Message from the President I News from Secretary General 3 Mid-Term events in Florence I Message from the Editor 4 In connection of the ICOH Mid-Term I Announcement 5 Meetings in Florence, Italy we had a Conference on “Active Ageing” in an extraordinary location at the historical I Next Event 7 Palazzo Vecchio. It took place in the main hall, where the representatives of the I Members’ Activity 12 five hundred rich families used to gather and decide on policies and measures hundreds of years ago. At our “historical” I HOT Topic 20 conference we debated on global policies and practices of ageing. In a way ageing I ICOH OPEN MIC 23 is a “positive problem” – the alternative of “not ageing” was a much bigger We had excellent contributions problem of the past. Ageing is, however, I Résumé en français 24 on policy by the Italian Minister, associated with a large number of Mayor of Florence and the Director work-related long latency diseases and General/ Employment of the European I ICOH Scientific Committees disorders, such as cancer, musculoskeletal Commission. Incidentally and quite Chairs and Secretaries disorders and cardiovascular events, rightly the Mayor pointed out that the 2015-2018 28 and all of them continue to grow in art work and frescos of the “Salone importance if our lifelong prevention de Cinquecento” hall were far more efforts fail. I National Secretaries Triennium impressive than any of our presentation slides. 2015-2018 30 The Board of ICOH had detailed I ICOH Officers and Board discussions of ICOH triennial progress, Members 32 including a joint session with Chairs of Scientific Committees. Overall, my view is that ICOH is doing very well, thanks to all active stakeholders: the Board, Scientific Committees, Secretariat General, Officers – and above all active individual, sustaining and affiliate members. In the member corner of [Italian Minister of Labour G. Poletti icohweb you’ll find downloadable addressing the Conference at Palazzo interesting documentation, and some Vecchio, on the left end is DG Michel open references are listed as sources list Servoz of the European Commission] below April 2017 1 What is the impact of ICOH compared to treatment of the diseases, – and how to measure negative outcomes and to economic costs progress? of non-action. International Commission on However, workplace or organization Occupational Health - ICOH My overall opinion above is clearly is not a country or nation where you Commission Internationale de biased but can we evaluate better ICOH usually find statistics and information. la Santé au Travail - CIST efforts? Traditionally occupational Should companies/organisations measure health and safety has been measured by sickness rate and absenteeism, stress occupational injury and disease statistics. survey results, results of health checks? These are biased, too. Surely not individually – it would be NEWSLETTER unethical - but collectively it would be “Cancer is a disease but occupational Volume 15, Number 1 useful for the enterprise management to cancer is an administrative decision” April 2017 know what is the percentage suffering from various mild or serious disorders ICOH Newsletter When I was asking from the Global and plan work accordingly. The level Published by the International Burden colleagues they replied that of workability in a group of workers in Commission on Occupational Health DALYs, Disability Adjusted Life Years average would be a reasonable leading Editors is a reasonable.overall measure. We indicator and predictor of potential future Editor in Chief further have a fair number of measures disability. A good place to work is also Eun-A Kim including the Competitiveness Index, a productive and competitive one. And [email protected] Happiness Index, Transparency and what is the desired outcome for each co- Manuscript Editor worker? Healthy and safe work where corruption index, Gini-coefficient and Kyoung-jin Sim workers are able to contribute and are [email protected] the Human Development Index, maybe in future the Sustainable Development supported throughout their working Editorial Board index. Where is the Occupational Health career and able to retire while still in Seong-Kyu Kang and Safety index? How about 1)coverage reasonably good health. Is this really [email protected] of occupational health services, 2) possible? At least my jobs throughout my Sergio Iavicoli qualitative and quantitative coverage of global working life have been extremely [email protected] injury and disease compensation systems, rewarding and healthy and this continues. Suvi Lehtinen 3) coverage of legal and inspection I have no intention to ever retire from [email protected] services, 4) relative number of specialists health and safety. Christophe Paris [email protected] -and relevant institutions - qualified Rosa M. Orriols doctors, nurses, ergonomists, hygienists, [email protected] psychosocial experts, inspectors, safety Jukka Takala Edoardo Santino and health engineers and the ratio of these President of ICOH [email protected] to the number of workers in question. Max Lum Are the 5) funds and resources spent for [email protected] preventive services reasonable when Stephane Vaxelaire [email protected] Reviewed and Edited by Sources KOSHA(Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency) Singapore https://goo.gl/RqvCKp The electronic version of the ICOH Globa https://goo.gl/3l6OMg Newsletter on the internet can be Cancer http://www.collegiumramazzini.org/download/2015/sat/1Straif.pdf accessed at the following address: http://www.collegiumramazzini.org/download/2015/sat/2bTakahashi2.pdf www.icohweb.org/newsletter http://www.collegiumramazzini.org/download/2015/sat/3Takala.pdf The responsibility for opinions https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4551060/ expressed in signed articles, studies Diseases https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jukka_TakalaO39-5 Illnesses and Injuries and other contributions rests solely GBD http://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/ with their authors, and publication EU exposures https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/eu-parliament-urged-beeffight-against- does not constitute an endorsement occupational-cancer by the International Commission on https://goo.gl/wrxCm3 Occupational Health of the opinions expressed in them. The ICOH Newsletter contents may freely be translated into other languages and disseminated among ICOH members. ⓒ International Commission on Occupational Health, 2017 ISSN 1459-6792 (Printed publication) 2 ICOH Newsletter Vol.15 No. 1 ISSN 1795-0260 (On-line publication) News from Secretary General Increasing and reactivating membership in Peru and Nepal I would like to highlight the importance of the role of joint actions of National Secretaries and Scientific Committee Chairs in the view of increasing ICOH membership, telling you about my recent experiences in Peru and Nepal. Let’s start from Peru. The occasion was the organization of the International workshop on "WORK AND VISION", that was held on 5-6 December 2016, in Arequipa, Peru, in collaboration But the need of increasing ICOH membership in some Countries with the Catholic University of Santa Maria. The workshop that are facing the worst effects of the rapid change in the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Work and Vision Scientific of work, mostly connected with migrant workers is very Committee, founded on September 16, 1996, during the 25th stringent within ICOH. ICOH International Congress held in Stockholm. On February 4-6, 2017, I arranged an ad-hoc visit to Kathmandu, It was aimed at promoting knowledge of the SC on Work and Nepal - one of the poorest and least of developing countries in Vision activities and proposals, presenting the Spanish version the world – to meet the ICOH National Secretary for Nepal for of SIMLII Guidelines on VDU work and fostering the the past triennium 2012-2015, Dr. Sunil Kumar Joshi. The development of joint activities with Universities, Union meeting was aimed at discussing possible joint actions in order representatives, Safety and Health at Work Committees, as well to reactivate ICOH Nepalese membership, also in consideration as with OH&S professionals in Latin America. that after the terrible 2015 earthquake none of the previous I had the pleasure to attend the conference as keynote speaker on members renewed his membership. The meeting was very the topic of ethics, innovation and technologies in occupational productive and 9 Nepalese members were able to reactivate health. My participation in the event as ICOH Officer was very their membership thanks to the NORO funds which covered important in order to increase ICOH visibility at national level their fees for the current triennium. Dr. Joshi confirmed his and reinforce ICOH mission. The visit to Peru gave me also the availability to be reappointed as ICOH National Secretary. opportunity to bring to Peruvian ICOH OSH community Furthermore, many positive initiatives were discussed including appreciation for their commitment in ICOH (Peru has been one the set-up of a new national network for occupational health. I of the countries with the best performance in improving ICOH had a constructive meeting at the Ministry of Labor and made a membership in the last years). speech at the Kathmandu Medical College (KMC). This visit Now I am pleased to give you some final figures in terms of was a productive example of how to reactivate ICOH membership. When I left, there were 68 ICOH members in membership in the poorest countries with a GDP less than 1000 good standing, we collected 50 new applications, and 24 new USD through a joint collaboration among the National Secretary members joined ICOH. and ICOH Officers, using the NORO funds. I hope that these participative initiatives might be a good practice to share in the ICOH Global community. In thanking you for being part of the ICOH community, I extend our best regards to all of you.