Abstract
The international CIHLMU Occupational Safety and Health Symposium 2019 was held on 16th March, 2019 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany. About 60 participants from around the world representing occupational health and safety professionals, students, instructors from several institutions in Germany and abroad, attended the symposium.The main objective of the symposium was to create awareness on global challenges and opportunities in work-related respiratory diseases. One keynote lecture and six presentations were made. While the keynote lecture addressed issues on occupational diseases in the twenty-first century, the six presentations were centered on: Prevention and control of work-related respiratory diseases, considerations; Occupational health and safety in Mining: Respiratory diseases; The prevention of TB among health workers is our collective responsibility; Compensation and prevention of occupational diseases and discussion on how artificial intelligence can support them: Overview of international approaches; Work-related Asthma: Evidence from high-income countries; and The role of imaging in the diagnosis of work- related respiratory diseases. A panel discussion was conducted following the presentations on the importance and challenges of data acquisition which is needed to have a realistic picture of the occupational safety and health status of workers at different levels. The current summary is an attempt to share the proceedings of the symposium.
Highlights
Work-related respiratory diseases contribute for 70% of all occupational disease mortality [1]; these include interstitial or fibrotic lung diseases, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, lung cancer, lung infections, work-related Asthma, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and bronchiolitis obliterans/airway destruction
Diagnosis of occupational diseases can be challenging as identification of an occupational cause for a disease requires exclusion of many other factors, which could potentially confound the presentation of a disease, resulting in discrepancy in the accuracy of diagnosis and underreporting [3, 4]
Similar to other medical conditions diagnosis of occupational respiratory illnesses is made based on history, physical examination, chest x-ray film, and pulmonary-function tests [5, 6]
Summary
Work-related respiratory diseases contribute for 70% of all occupational disease mortality [1]; these include interstitial or fibrotic lung diseases, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, lung cancer, lung infections, work-related Asthma, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and bronchiolitis obliterans/airway destruction. The burden of occupational respiratory diseases is increasing worldwide, which necessitates the need for vigilant surveillance for development of public health policies, timely identification and interventions, with especial attention to high risk work places [12].
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