Assessing the effect of working conditions on routine medical checkup among artisanal goldminers in Ghana

Abstract

The socio-economic impacts of unforeseen health challenges among mine workers cannot be overemphasized. Due to the nature of artisanal mining in Ghana, workers are responsible for their own health care. This, however, necessitates the need for insight into the dynamics of self-care among artisanal miners. A cross-sectional survey of 500 artisanal gold miners was conducted to explore the relationship between working conditions of artisanal miners and voluntarily going for routine medical checkup, even in the absence of the right support systems, using a nested binary logistic regression. All the working condition variables were robust in predicting routine medical checkup in all three models. In this case, goldminers who reported good health, safety and environmental conditions were more likely to go for routine medical checkup as compared to their co-workers who reported poor health, safety and environmental conditions. Contrariwise, miners who reported good economic conditions were less likely to go for routine medical checkup as compared to their counterparts who reported poor economic conditions. Also, routine medical checkup was less likely among artisanal miners who did not protect themselves at work and had experienced work related health challenges. For the compositional factors, miners who had senior high school education were more likely to go for routine medical checkup as compared to those with no formal education. Likewise, older miners were more probable to go for routine medical checkup as compared to their younger counterparts. At the contextual level, miners who worked on shift regime and miners who worked in non-production departments were more likely to go for routine medical checkup. The outcome of this study provides insight into the dynamics of self-care amongst artisanal miners and how best to possibly improve it in an attempt to maintain a healthy workforce and its cascading effects. To increase consciousness of self-health care in artisanal mining, there is the need for a national dialogue on how to improve the working conditions of artisanal miners in Ghana.