Madrid has the lowest incidence of occupational diseases in Spain but that “is not good news”

Madrid is the third autonomous community with the largest active population (3.7 million people) and employed population (3.3 million people), behind Catalonia and Andalusia, but it is also the one with the lowest incidence of occupational diseases. . This “is not good news,” warns the union General Union of Workers of Spain (UGT) in its most recent report on occupational diseases in the region. Currently, the Madrid region has an incidence of diseases derived from the work environment of 23 reports per 100,000 workers. In contrast, Navarra reports 16 times more pathologies: 363 reports per 100,000.

UGT maintains that the low number of occupational diseases in Madrid is not an achievement, but, in fact, an under-record. “Many of the current work-related diseases continue to be declared as common diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal disorders or pathologies derived from psychosocial risks in the work environment,” details the union. In 2023, 1,129 cases of occupational diseases have been registered in the Community of Madrid, according to figures from the Regional Institute of Safety and Health at Work. 10 years ago, in 2013, 1,247 were reported. Although the number of workers and the number of occupational pathologies have increased in the last decade, 118 fewer cases are now reported.

It is not the first time that UGT warns that the figures do not add up. In 2020, it had already published a report with similar conclusions and with a request that remains valid: that Madrid have a disease notification system, which coordinates information from mutual insurance companies and public health to make it easier to identify an illness. work and not be confused with a common illness. But, four years later, nothing has changed, according to Leticia Fernández, Secretary of Occupational Health and Environment of UGT. For this reason, the union will put the issue on the table of the Community of Madrid. On February 16, the General Secretary of UGT Madrid, Marina Prieto, will appear before the Economy Commission to present some of the figures from this latest report and recall the request for the notification system itself. “Madrid has already advanced in workplace accidents, we value that. For this reason, we ask that just as there is an improvement plan for this, the occupational disease be addressed now and a dialogue table be opened,” says Fernández. This newspaper contacted the Ministries of Health and Economy last Friday, but has not obtained any response for now.

For now, the Madrid worker is in a labyrinth. If a person has an illness that, he suspects, may be caused by his work activity, he should go to the mutual insurance company. This, in principle, evaluates the patient and verifies whether his illness is in the list of occupational diseases of the Social Security System, approved at the national level in 2006. If everything matches, enter the case report and advance the protocol. If not, the most likely thing, Fernández explains, is that this worker will end up in the health system where his illness is classified as a common illness. “The entire cost of this illness, then, is not assumed by the employer, but is borne by public health, which, in the end, all taxpayers pay,” says Fernández. That is to say, this under-registration is expensive for Madrid.

It is also possible that the doctor detects something unusual and the protocol for suspected occupational disease is continued. The most recent Occupational health notebook published by the Community of Madrid explains that since 2012 communication has been promoted between the doctors of the Madrid health system (Sermas) and the occupational risk prevention services to try to solve the cases. Until 2019, communication was done in physical forms and, from that year on, communication was promoted through the APMadrid computer system. “However, the dissemination of this tool could not be undertaken until the end of 2022; From then on it has begun to be used timidly,” the notebook says. Then, he recognizes that since there are no regional regulations that regulate notification among all the institutions involved and since there is a general lack of knowledge when communicating these suspicions, the process “is being carried out in a very irregular manner.” UGT adds that in the event that the worker wants to try, despite everything, to prove that his illness is work-related and not common, the bureaucratic process is long.

Therefore, there are two requests. One is to update the Spanish list of occupational diseases, a task that corresponds to the Ministry of Health. The second, which is regional competence, is to improve the action protocol with a standard and its own coordinated system, as other territories already do. Marisa Rufino, author of the UGT report, details that other communities such as Navarra have perfected the method and use other systems that try to reduce this under-registration. Navarra, for example, works with the Sentinel notification network, which allows a family doctor to detect in his office that a patient has a disease that may be caused by his work. Rufino explains that in Centinela there are diseases that, if detected in the patient during a consultation, generate an alarm. The doctor, then, refers it to the mutual insurance or prevention so that it can be investigated and confirmed whether or not it is an occupational disease. “What these systems do is make the work of the family doctor easier. In Madrid that does not exist, so the doctor does not link that the illness may have to do with work and will only worry about trying to cure the patient,” says Rufino. The Basque Country, she adds, has implemented a similar system in 2020 and has seen the declaration of occupational diseases increase by 40%. “They are complementary systems that what they are doing is bringing to the surface many occupational diseases that were hidden,” she concludes. Now, comes Madrid's turn.

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