Global and Indian Scenarios of Fatal and Non-fatal Occupational Injuries: A Secondary Data Analysis

Fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries are one of the most important public health problems all over the world. Its number greatly varies from country to country over the years. Worldwide approximately 4% of global gross domestic product (GDP) is lost due to occupational injuries. It has also been estimated that daily, approximately 1 million workers get injured, and more than 5000 workers die due to their occupation. In this research work, using modern data analytics techniques, we have tried to explore the current situation and time trend of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries globally and in India.

Using the open-source data available at the International Labour Organization (ILO) database and the Government of India open database, analysis was performed systematically using R and Python programming languages. Data have been accessed by December 31, 2022. To make a representative sample population for this article, four countries from Europe and Central Asia region (Russia, France, Germany, and United Kingdom), four countries from the Asia-Pacific region (India, Australia, Japan, and Republic of Korea), and two countries from Americas (United States and Argentina) are selected for a meaningful comparison purpose.

Since 2000, the time trend of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries has been increasing trend globally. The yearly average (± standard deviation) of fatal and non-fatal injuries per country per million population was 256 (±68) and 83380 (±41280). The number of fatal injuries in India has increased over the years, but the number of non-fatal injuries in India is decreasing trend.

According to the ILO database, it has been revealed in this article that, on average yearly, 83380 per million population total occupational injuries are reported worldwide. Among them, yearly, 256 per million population (0.3%) workers per country succumbed to injuries. According to Government of India database, there was an average of 271 deaths per year between 2000 and 2021. For evidence-based decision and policy making and subsequent program implementation, the availability of timely, good-quality data from every industrial sector of society is most important. It can only be achieved by implementing integrated occupational injury surveillance programs at national and global levels.