Occupational health and disease of seasonal agricultural worker's

Year 2017, Volume 2, Issue 1(4), 19 - 19, 01.11.2017

Nazan Akçalı Sevim Sibel Demir Muhsin Akbaba Alper Acil

Abstract

Agricultural
sector in Turkey is the most important employment outside the services sector.
The actual people working at any stage of agricultural production, that coming
from outside, with or without contract are called seasonal agricultural
workers. It is a known fact that seasonal migratory workers have difficult
conditions. Workers aren’t in a position to achieve minimum standarts in areas
such as organization because of their working and social life conditions and
their educational level. Therefore to develop a strategy and action plan for
improvement of working and social life conditions of seasonal migrants’the
identification of true and sufficient data is crucial fort he location of the
solution proposals.



The problems of seasonal agricultural workers are multi-dimensional: education,
health, transportation, security, etc. Agricultural workers, exposed to
significantly higher levels of accidents and lethal injuries than other
workers, and they have very limited resources for treatment costs. In
agricultural sector structure there is the most of informal workers. In many
countries agricultural workers don’t benefit from a work accident aid or
insurance plan. Agricultural workers are faced to significant risks of cancer,
respiratory diseases, injuries and accidents. According to Social Security
Institution statistics of 2014, respiratory tract diseases are seen 23.3%,
musculoskeletal system diseases 4.7%, skin diseases 1.2% and other diseases
2.2%.The fact that agricultural land is often far from the center so it is
difficult to reach them. Working environment contains ‘’physical hazards’’ from
air, landfill and machinery, ‘’toxicological hazards’’ caused by pesticides,
fertilizers and fuel and hazards arising from dusts.



The most important problems of seasonal agricultural workers for security and
health are respiratory tract hazards, dermatological hazards, toxic and
neoplastic hazards, accidents and injuries, mechanical and thermal stress and
behaivoral hazards, reproductive health problems, musculoskeletal system
diseases, infectious diseases, cancers and psyco-social problems.

 

 

Keywords:
agriculture,
workers, health

Keywords

Occupational health and disease of seasonal agricultural worker's

References

• Nazan Akçalı1, Sevim Sibel Demir2, Muhsin Akbaba3, Alper Acil1 1Adana Public Health Directorate 2Osmaniye Public Health Directorate 3Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Public Health