Where is the health of health system reform workers?

Work is closely related to health. With good health you can do the job well, with bad health you cannot do it, you only generate expenses; Work facilitates access to the means needed to improve the quality of life, but an unsafe or polluted work environment can also affect health and cause illness and even death. (Read the case of the oldest man who cured leukemia and recovered from HIV)

All work environments expose those performing their jobs to risk factors that have the potential to affect their health, the most well-known of which are work accidents. There are also occupational diseases that have two general types, diseases with high frequency, low complexity and low cost, and diseases with lower frequency, high complexity and high cost. This means that there are high and low cost occupational diseases.

One of the most expensive diseases is occupational cancer, which can be found in almost all structures or organs of the body. As well as diseases such as pneumoconiosis, kidney disorders, endocrine disorders, neurological diseases, mental diseases, circulatory diseases, and others. Among the low-cost diseases, musculoskeletal diseases, carpal tunnel, elbow injuries, shoulder injuries, bursitis, tendonitis, lumbar spine injuries, hearing loss, etc. stand out. (Read Yes, Coronavirus Cases Have Increased in Colombia, But Don't Worry)

The official report of the occupational risks insurance sector states that 85% of accepted cases are related to low-cost cases, and that diseases such as occupational cancer and stress-related circulatory diseases do not exceed 0.1%.

Regarding the health sector reform proposal, it is striking that what was approved did not explicitly specify what the sectoral commitment should be so that the identification of cases of occupational diseases in the health sector is strengthened and has a technical quality that ensures its official recognition. If this process is not clear, the diagnosis will continue to be missed under known denial.

However, the EPS discussion has focused on the amount of UPC to meet service requirements. No senior government official or ADRES asked about the value of high-cost cases that were not properly qualified. They also did not investigate those cases that were very expensive and were not paid by insurance companies, as they denied it and left it in the hands of councils that discussed it in their crisis due to overcrowding and the worker had already died. .

The International Labor Organization notes that up to 7% of all deaths are due to occupational causes, and finds that the costs of work-related illnesses can amount to 1% to 6% of GDP, with an average of 4%. Here the question arises: If the private sector support plan allocates 4% of GDP to recovery from expensive occupational diseases, will it have sufficient resources to achieve financial stability and achieve the maximum level of quality of care? This discussion should be considered considering that the figure applied to each year of the 30 years of the health system allows us to confirm that what the health sector has wasted is very high value due to the lack of a technically strong line of work, to identify and identify cases of occupational disease, God willing. Early, it qualifies them and cures them.

In May 2021, the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization published a study quantifying the burden of heart disease and strokes attributable to exposure to long working hours, and determining that 750,000 worker deaths are linked to these working conditions, which is the case today. .

In the European Union, occupational cancer is recognized as the leading cause of death for workers, followed by circulatory diseases. These figures are so far removed from the national figures that we are forced to consider whether Colombia is a paradise for the prevention of work or business risks. The health sector's inability to identify cases is so great that they are lost, which indicates the greatest waste without fail, because it is not even mentioned.

One of the origins of this negative phenomenon is the ignorance of doctors at the primary level, and in many cases, at other levels, of the danger of exposure to highly dangerous substances, and considering that the professional origin does not exist, which has led to the classification of cases. As a joint asset, for the benefit of the real person, the employer and the insured against occupational risks.

It should not be accepted that in the IPS institution where workers are treated, there are no doctors with knowledge of the characteristics of occupational diseases and there are occupational medicine specialists as consultants at these levels of care.

I propose that ADRES considers the under-diagnosis of occupational diseases as a serious sectoral inefficiency, and demands the identification of strategies to solve this problem and traceability after thirty years of non-recovery of high-cost diseases in each EPS. The result will provide the answer to the economic impotence practiced today by health promoters who carry this sin on their shoulders.

The country deserves and needs to think about these issues.

*Work doctor- [email protected]

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