Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Abstract

Occupational illnesses are one of the problems in occupational health that receive grave concern in every industry, both in the organized sector and the unorganized sector. However, in Indonesia, a weak attention from the government, private workers and researcher on occupational health and the weak policies on occupational illnesses in industries, particularly in unorganized sectors, has made the occupational illnesses in this area. As a result, the accurate number of incidence of occupational illnesses is hard to find since they often not well diagnosed in the early stages. Also, nowadays, other nations recognize Indonesia as the country with a limited and invalid source of information on occupational illnesses. Therefore, strengthening the function of Community Health Centre (Pusat Kesehatan Masyarakat) as the primary guard of the public health service in Indonesia is critical to do. Community Health Centre is the first public health service that can be reached by all levels of the community, either low, middle, or high class and has sufficient human resources so it can assist the diagnosis process and data collection of occupational illnesses. It includes the activities such as placing human resources in accordance with its competence; collecting all working history data from the community; conducting regular visits to the local community to detect the presence of occupational illnesses that are late to be diagnosed; improving the occupational health and safety service; and collecting the data of illnesses routinely, either from the visit result or examination result at Community Health Centre. The human resources needed for this activity are workers who have a comprehensive level of understanding of occupational health and the science of epidemiology. The researcher believes that the improvement of the Community Health Centre can bring a better change for Indonesia, especially in the field of occupational health, in approximately 5-8 years to come.

Biography