[Occupational diseases among health and social workers in Poland]

The aim of the analysis was to report statistical data on the incidence of occupational diseases among health and social workers in Poland in 1994-2008.

All cards certifying that a case of occupational disease had been diagnosed in a patient belonging to this occupational group, received by the Central Register of Occupational Diseases from all Polish Sanitary Epidemiological Stations, were used as the basis of this report. The data are presented in absolute values and in terms of incidence rates. In the analysis disease categories, voivodships and occupations were taken into account.

In 1994-2008, as many as 14,272 cases of occupational diseases were diagnosed in health care workers. Mean annual incidence rate was 104.5 cases per 100 thousand workers. Contagious and parasitic diseases were most frequent (57.6% of cases). Other diseases were evidently less frequent: chronic vocal organ disorders (13.5%), dermal diseases (10.3%), musculoskeletal (8.1%) and peripheral nervous system diseases (4.4%) and vibration syndrome (1.7%). The contribution of all other occupational diseases was 5.3%. Viral hepatitis and tuberculosis were dominating in the contagious/parasitic category, accounting for 72.1% and 22.9%, respectively. The incidence analyzed by occupation showed the highest rate of total occupational diseases among dentists (33.5 cases per 10,000), while the incidence of contagious/parasitic diseases was highest among nurses and midwives (6.9 cases per 10,000).

The incidence of occupational diseases in total and in the most frequent categories continued to decrease, except for viral hepatitis C, which showed only a slightly upward trend. There was a remarkable difference in the incidence of viral hepatitis between individual voivodships of Poland.