Original Research Article
Year: 2018 | Month: September | Volume: 8 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 183-189
Occupational Health of Brick Workers of India
Sunita Kumari
Assistant Professor, Ranchi University, Jharkhand, India
ABSTRACT
Brick workers are one of the most vulnerable unorganised working class of India. It is often found that the brick workers suffer from morbidities because of indecent work and the unhygienic living environment. Nonetheless, it is a less studied subject in India. Thus, paper assessed the causative factors explaining the morbidity in brick workers, further the prevalence of disease and loss of household income on health care, and find out the gap in demand and supply of public healthcare facilities. In this study, the latest round of National Sample Survey data (2014) that is “A Key Indicators of Social Consumption in India: Health’ conducted from January to June 2014were used. The binary logistic regression was run for the analysis of background characteristics and the probability of illness. The findings revealed that the self-reported morbidity among brick workers was around 11%, while it was 10% in the general population during the last 15 days of the survey. The most frequent occurrences of ailments in the brick kiln workers were injuries and infections. Out of total workers who were suffering from morbidity due to some accident or injury during the last 15 days of the survey, almost 57 % of them reported a loss of household income in their treatment. Among those, only 10% of the brick workers covered by healthcare schemes, rest of the 90% did not possess health insurance. Hence, the brick workers suffer from living environment induced communicable disease and work environment induced injuries. The workers do not avail a proper treatment because of unaffordability as well as the inaccessibility of healthcare facilities.
Key words: Unorganised Workers, Morbidity, Communicable Diseases, Public Health Care Facilities, Brick Workers