[Occupational disease centers--an important element in the improvement of health services for the workers]

Occupational morbidity is tending to increase, but the official statistics still underestimates occupational pathology cases, which can be explained by inadequacy of preventive medical examinations, poor training of physicians in occupational medicine, as well as the underdeveloped technical basis of health services and the unavailability of coordinating and consulting centres for providing guidance in occupational diseases' prevention. The establishment of such centres would improve the scope of preventive activities most significantly.