Basic Occupational Health Services in Agriculture: a strategy to increase intervention for rural workers and reduce health inequalities in rural areas.

About half of the human population lives and works in rural areas, very often engaged in agricultural activities, that mainly consist in food and feed production through land use. This means that the activities of these workers are directly linked with the wellbeing and healthiness of millions of people, as demonstrated by the cases of environmental pollution and depletion attributable to unsound agricultural practices, as well as by the evident link of recent public health emergencies with agriculture and animal breeding: specific examples are “mad cow disease”, SARS, avian influenza and new influenza, directly attributed to unsafe intensive animal breeding procedures, or simply affected in their severity or incidence by specific and identified agricultural activities. It is therefore evident that agricultural workers are a patrimony of any country, and only healthy and well trained agricultural workers can produce healthy food, in the healthiness of the living environment. Despite this social and economic relevance, and their role in promoting the wellbeing of entire nations, it seems that agricultural workers are not adequately addressed by prevention, and their access to occupational safety and health is limited. Making the point of the situation, and identifying the main objectives for occupational and public health, is therefore a primary and urgent need.