Abstract
BackgroundGlobally, about 1000 people die and close to 860,000 people sustain injury at work daily. Injury prevention and control require contextual evidence, although most studies in Uganda have focused on general causes. Factors associated with occupational injuries among building construction workers were assessed in this study.MethodsA cross-sectional study among building construction workers was conducted in Kampala, Uganda. A standardized semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Three hundred nineteen (319) participants were randomly and proportionately selected from 57 construction sites. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the variables while generalized linear modeling was used to estimate the crude/adjusted prevalence ratios.ResultsThe prevalence of occupational injuries was 32.4%. Most injuries, approximately 70% occurred among nightshift workers. Age of ≤24 years (APR: 2.09 CI: 1.20–3.65, P = 0.009); daily income in or above the second quartile−USD ≥3.2 (APR: 1.72, CI: 1.06–2.80, P = 0.028); job dissatisfaction (APR: 1.63, CI: 1.17–2.27, P = 0.004); job stress (APR: 1.72, CI: 1.22–2.41, P = 0.004); poor safety environment (APR: 1.51, CI: 1.10–2.05, P = 0.009); PPE provision (APR: 1.47, CI: 1.05–2.05, P = 0.02) and routine use of PPE (APR: 0.57, CI: 0.34–0.95, P = 0.03) were significantly associated with occupational injuries.ConclusionThere was a relatively high prevalence of injuries mostly resulting from cuts and mostly suffered on night duty. Upper and lower extremities were the most hurt parts of the body during injury leading to loss of a substantial number of productive days. This could affect the health and wellbeing of construction workers. Most of the factors significantly associated with occupational injuries are modifiable thus an opportunity to address the problem. Efforts towards integrating education for behaviour change, advocacy and training workers to demand for their rights to safe and protection at work and legislation enforcement can help reduce occupational injury occurrence.
Highlights
About 1000 people die and close to 860,000 people sustain injury at work daily
Socio-demographic characteristics and injury prevalence among construction workers Table 1 shows the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents
More than a half (51.2%) especially causal labourers (Fig. 2) worked for more than 10 h a day yet the daily income of 59.43% of the workers was in the second quartile and below especially the causal labourers whose daily income fell in the first quartile (Fig. 3)
Summary
About 1000 people die and close to 860,000 people sustain injury at work daily. Factors associated with occupational injuries among building construction workers were assessed in this study. Occupational injuries are a public health and economic problem globally with about 5–7% of all fatalities in industrial countries attributable to work-related injuries [1]. In low-income countries, non-occupational health problems pose a bigger burden, but work-related injuries pose a substantial burden [2]. It is estimated that more than 16,000 fatal occupational injuries occur in the established market economies with a fatality rate of 4.2 and accident rate of 3240 per 100,000 workers respectively These are lower than the fatality and accident rates in developing countries like in Asia at 21.5 and 16,434 per 100,000 workers respectively and Sub-Saharan Africa at 21 and 16,012 per 100,000 workers respectively [11]
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