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Séminaire - Martie van Tongeren

Occupational Disease Surveillance in the UK: The Health and Occupation Research network (THOR)

Le DSEST vous invite à un séminaire spécial qui sera présenté le 5 août prochain à 12 h par le Professeur Martie van Tongeren du Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Centre for Epidemiology, University of Manchester

La présentation aura lieu au pavillon 7101 Parc, local 3019.

Résumé: 

Occupational disease and work-related injuries impose a heavy burden on workers and employers and at large economic costs.  However, high quality data on occupational diseases is often lacking and information on incidence and prevalence is often rather poor and fragmented.  The Occupation and Health Research (THOR) network which collects data on occupational diseases in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. THOR currently consists of four separate surveillance schemes: SWORD (chest physicians), EPIDERM (dermatologists), OPRA (occupational physicians) and THOR-GP (GPs).  In total, over 1000 physicians participate either as ‘sample’ reporters (reporting one month per year) or ‘core’ reporters (reporting all year).  Approximately 113,000 incident cases have been reported to THOR (and its predecessor) since 1989.  Trends in various occupational diseases have generally shown a decline in incidence since the mid-1990s.  However, more recently the trends have plateaued.  Data collected by THOR have also been used to evaluate trends in incidence for specific groups of workers (for example, dermatitis in hairdressers) and in relation to specific agents (for example, asthma attributed to flour) and to evaluate interventions such as the introduction of work exposure limits (WELs) on asthma incidence amongst different groups of workers.  THOR is a voluntary reporting scheme, which means that participating physicians do not receive any payment for reporting cases.  This provides some difficulties in terms of recruiting and avoiding reporting fatigue.  In addition, it is often not clear what the size of the population is that have access to the participating physicians.  Hence, it is sometimes difficult to estimate accurate incidence rates.  However, results of the scheme are heavily used by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK.  The data collected through THOR allow relative temporal trends in occupational incidence and also provide a sentinel observatory for novel causes of occupational disease.  Extension of this system to other countries could contribute to obtaining better knowledge incidence and trend on occupational disease and would allow comparison between countries.

 

Pour plus d'informations sur le conférencier:

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/Martie.J.Van-Tongeren.html