LEADER

摘要

OCCUPATIONAL health can play a 'valuable and sustainable' role in reducing the world's disease burden and improving wellbeing, and can help alleviate poverty and reduce inequality, says the World Health Organization (WHO) (p.12)1. Over 1.2 million deaths and 2.7% of the total disease burden are attributable to work, disproportionately affecting workers in low- and middle-income countries; but this does not mean that OH cannot deliver major public health improvements in high-income countries too. However, with no clear national commitment to delivering OH beyond those services funded by - and, understandably, largely for the benefit of-that minority of employers that offer them, it's hard to envisage howthis potential might be fully realised in the UK.The government's response last November2 to its own work, health and disability green paper, for example, promised yet more research, pilots, feasibility studies, working groups, best-practice reviews and consultations, but didn't feel like a 'strategy'.