Some of the main reasons for occupational health and safety deficiencies in small-scale mining are unawareness of risks of chronic occupational diseases and inadequately implemented education and training. The key needs of the sector is to provide access to knowledge and tools that will raise awareness and disseminate affordable, best practice methods for use by small-scale mines. With this in mind, the CSIR Occupational Health and Ergonomics research group have developed the OREOHS tool, which is a comprehensive model for hazard identification and risk assessment of occupational health stressors that can be applied to mining operations of various types and sizes but in particular by small-scale enterprises. A scoring system was included in the checklists to facilitate a quantifying of the risk which would further enable a risk rating and ranking of health hazards in the workplace. Guidelines for the use of the organisational evaluation of risks associated with exposure to health stressors and guidelines for the use of each checklist are included. The OREOHS can be transposed onto a spreadsheet that will facilitate the automatic calculation of the risk rating and ranking of health hazards in a small mine.
Useful Resources
This highly illustrated guide helps health promoters, development workers, environmental activists, and community leaders take charge of their environmental health. The book contains activities to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, inspirational stories, and instructions for simple health technologies such as water purification methods, safe toilets, and non-toxic cleaning products. 23 chapters cover topics including: preventing and reducing harm from toxic pollution; forestry, restoring land, and planting trees; protecting community water and watersheds; food security and sustainable farming; environmental health at home; solid waste and health care waste; and how to reduce harm from mining, oil, and energy production. With dozens of activities to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, instructions for simple health technologies such as safe toilets, safe cleaning methods, and water purification methods, and hundreds of drawings to make the messages clear, the guide should be useful for people just beginning to address environmental health threats, as well as people with many years’ experience in the field.
This is the first of six films in the series "Bringing the Social to Rio+20". The film uses footage from recordings and interviews from the 2011 UNRISD conference, "Green Economy and Sustainable Development: Bringing Back the Social Dimension". It explores the green economy's potential as a path to inclusive, sustainable development and poverty eradication.
These six right-to-health pamphlets contain basic, easy to read information and can be placed in any South African public health service facility or distributed to patients and organisations working in public health. Topics include: community involvement; the Patients’ Rights Charter; individual and collective rights; access to information; and rights and resource allocation.
Existing guidelines for management of diarrhoea are often ignored in public and private practice, possibly because of a perception that the guidelines are too simple, or because of expectations of the need to give ‘real’ drug therapy to stop diarrhoea. This guideline provides a problem-based approach to the basics of present-day management of acute gastroenteritis, and discusses the evidence for the recommendations. The guidelines recommend that each episode of diarrhoea must be seen as an opportunity for caregiver education in the prevention of the illness, in the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of oral rehydration and re-feeding, and in the recognition of when to seek help. The vast majority of patients recover rapidly, but serious complications do occur, and must be recognised and managed correctly. The guidelines are endorsed by the Paediatric Management Group (PMG) in South Africa.
This toolkit was designed in response to the need for a practical tool to empower communities on what the right to health means, how to identify violations of health rights and how to respond to these violations. The toolkit can be used as a stand-alone source of information or as training tool for workshops on the right to health. Each section uses practical examples to illustrate ideas, and has a number of exercises and case studies that could be used for training purposes. At the end of each chapter is a set of workshop handouts that can be photocopied for participants. Many of these examples are actual cases that emerged from the work of the Learning Network for Health and Human Rights over the past few years. The toolkit is designed for use by civil society organisations (CSOs) such as health committees, NGOs working with health issues, educational institutions, community members or anyone with an interest in health rights.
The African Region of the World Health Organisation (WHO/AFRO) manages this database of medical journals, which has recently increased its share of African medical journals to 156, some with open access. For the full list of these journals, visit the website. Other documents such as medical dissertations/theses and grey literature are also available.
The ICD is the international standard diagnostic classification for all general epidemiological, many health management purposes and clinical use. These include the analysis of the general health situation of population groups and monitoring of the incidence and prevalence of diseases and other health problems in relation to other variables such as the characteristics and circumstances of the individuals affected, reimbursement, resource allocation, quality and guidelines. It is used to classify diseases and other health problems recorded on many types of health and vital records including death certificates and health records. In addition to enabling the storage and retrieval of diagnostic information for clinical, epidemiological and quality purposes, these records also provide the basis for the compilation of national mortality and morbidity statistics by WHO Member States.
In this new blog, Jane Doherty, a researcher and lecturer at the Wits University School of Public Health in South Africa, takes the view that South Africa must move towards a health system that is fair and functional. She discusses the proposed national health insurance (NHI) scheme for South Africa, introducing readers to a range of issues relevant to the new NHI. For example, relevant legislation, in the form of the government’s Green Paper on the NHI is presented, and Doherty discusses the motivations behind the NHI, such as the urgent need to reduce South Africa’s high levels of maternal mortality, and she also considers the employment impact of the NHI, contending that claims that the NHI will cause job losses are unfounded. There are links to Doherty’s research, as well as to other interesting and relevant research.
This tool is a portal that is intended to provide public health practitioners with all the necessary information they need on the social determinants of health (SDH). ACTION:SDH houses knowledge on the SDH and provides a platform for discussion of action on the SDH. The World Health Organisation (WHO) invites everyone in the SDH community to register on ACTION:SDH. WHO is also actively seeking partners interested in collaborating in building up the tool, together with its users. There are three main features: embedded web-pages pages on SDH knowledge relevant to the five action areas for SDH that were identified in the Rio Declaration of October 2011; discussion forums that can be used to share tacit knowledge from practice - either by invitation only, or open to all members; and a document repository that initially is housing selected WHO materials on SDH. Other standard website features also exist, such as an area for advertising upcoming training (Campus) and upcoming meetings (Events).