Primary occupational health care in agriculture in the Region of Lombardy : Italy. A practical approach and its preliminary results

Introduction At the International Centre for Rural Health of Milan a project aimed at creating Basic Occupational Health Services structures in the territory is currently running. The aim is to provide agricultural workers with occupational health care and to collect and elaborate information adequate to create a better understanding of their health conditions together with specific hypothesis of burden of occupational diseases and health care needs. Materials and methods This presentation reports data collected from a group of 800 workers of 260 agricultural enterprises. Results The authors report data on the prevalence in the population under study of occupational and work related diseases, such as respiratory affections (on allergic basis such as asthma and rhinitis and on irritative basis, like acute bronchitis and COPD), and noise induced hearing loss. Data show the presence of this last disease in 30% of the study group, mainly in workers engaged in noisy activities, such as tractor driving and garden maintenance. On the other hand, our preliminary data do not show a significant difference between farmers and general population with regard to allergy and respiratory diseases. Other general pathologies such as hypertension, ischemic heart diseases and metabolic impairments are kept under strict surveillance, in the view of a global workers’ health care, also in collaboration with the General Practitioners. Finally, a particular attention has to be paid to the immunisation status versus Clostridium tetani in a sector, like agriculture is, with a very high incidence of injuries at risk for the infection. Seroprevalence of IgG antitetanus measured on a sample of 100 workers shows that, migrant workers seem to be at higher risk Specific sensitization campaigns have to be programmed, also taking into account linguistic and cultural barriers.