Reflections on brazilian occupational health policies: advances and challenges

Abstract

The Occupational Health (OH) is a Public Health field whose object is the health-illness process of the human being and its relation with work. The health as everyone’s right is praised by the Brazilian National Health System and is also proposed as part of the National Worker’s Health Policy. This study presents a reflection of the OH context proposed program in Brazil, its policies, social and prevention characteristics undertaken in this context. It also points out problems such as underreporting of diseases, accidents and deaths related to work, identifies fragmentation of these actions, resulting in actual difficulties of establishing the responsibilities between various organizations and lack of training of professionals able to develop concrete actions. Though, for an effective action in OH there should be a broad interrelation and integration between the workers and the different knowledge areas such as health, education, ergonomics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, among others.