June 3, 2015

An image of Earth from space is beamed on screen. All looks peaceful. But it’s soon replaced with close-ups of workplace realities: sprawling assembly lines and truck drivers in polluted cities.

“The great majority of our workers suffer from NCDs,” said Dr. Susan Mercado of the WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office, noting that non-communicable diseases are the No. 1 cause of death in the sprawling 37-country region home to ¼ of the world’s people.

At Tuesday’s Global Policy Forum, she wasn’t alone in stressing the interplay between global workers’ health and the social conditions and environments beyond their workplace.

“We cannot only focus on the workplace alone; we have to look at society at large,” said Hans-Horst Konkolewsky ISSA secretary general.

The forum rose up to its lofty ambitions, as lecturers’ words flowed on OSH issues in Africa, and Asia, whose far-ranging living standards result in wide-ranging OSH standards.

An Kyung Duk, director general of the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor, noted that SME workers bear the lion‘s share of workplace injuries because such businesses employ many older workers at higher risk.

Even as different parts of the planet each grapple with different OSH issues, the planet’s workplace health issues are deeply intertwined, insisted the ILO’s Nancy Leppink. “Globalization has forced the world to look beyond country boundaries and pay particular attention to global supply chains.”