[Working conditions and occupational morbidity in workers of the Russian Federation]

To create healthy and safe working conditions are constantly in the focus of attention at all governmental levels. To reduce deaths and traumatism from occupational accidents and diseases, by providing safe working conditions is one of the priorities of the demographic policy pursued by the Government of the Russian Federation. In the able-bodied population, the current mortality from natural causes (accidents, poisonings, and traumas, including occupation-related ones) exceeds that by 2.5 and 1.5 times in developed and developing countries, respectively. The worse conditions remain to be those in coal-mining and shipbuilding industries, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, agriculture, tractor-building and agricultural engineering, building materials industry, road-building machinery, logging industry, power machine building, and civil engineering. On-going checks reveal low sanitary culture and industrial discipline, no package of sanitary-and-prophylactic measures, as well as poor knowledge about sanitary legislation requirements in the heads of small-scale business and private undertakings. In 2006, the Russian Federation notified 357 cases of occupational diseases among medical workers, of which there were 196 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis and 39 cases of viral hepatitis. Despite the fact that the cases of occupational diseases are annually on the decrease, these are being underdetected.