In many LEDCs, at the age of 4, girls start to assume household tasks, take care of their little brothers and sisters, replace their mothers in the house when she is engaged in agricultural work or help her with field work, livestock and handicraft work Nestvogel, Thus, it comes as no surprise that primary-school-age children out of school in LEDCs make up 76 percent of the world's out of school primary-school-age children, according to statistics from UNESCO Institute of Statistics.
Figure 4 Children of the lower class that do attend school in LEDCs and are not taught in the well-structured private schools of the children of upper-class families. They also do not have access to the private tutors that children from upper-class families are provided with. As a result, they often have to face poor classroom conditions. Globally, three billion working people have daily occupational health needs that can only be met by providing occupational health services, such as those to support sick workers and to ensure that workplaces are safe and healthy 1.
Each year, over two million of the world's workers die from occupational diseases and million get sick from non-fatal occupational diseases 2. Disability adjusted life years DALYs are a measure of the years of a healthy life lost from disease and premature death; in It is estimated that 1. Occupational diseases are entirely preventable, but the ILO estimates occupational injuries and diseases cost the world 2.
The overall worker death rate continues to increase, with the majority of deaths taking place in poorer countries with fewer legal protections for workers 6. Despite being disproportionately affected, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of the occupationally-related morbidity and mortality being experienced in the poorest countries of the world. One of the greatest challenges encountered while conducting occupational health research in less economically developed countries LEDCs , is a lack of local or even regional data to describe the extent of the problem.
This includes information on exposure in general and in the form of exposure measurements, and information about the industry and population under study. A search of the Scopus bibliographic database was used to identify the number of papers on occupational health across the world.
There were 76, documents listed; the earliest publication appeared in , with around 2, papers published annually in recent years. Unsurprisingly, the most populous countries generally published more papers related to occupational health.
Figure 1 shows the data we retrieved for the DAC list countries along with comparable data for the 31 most affluent countries in the world, normalised to the total population. Figure 1. Although only one bibliographic database was used to illustrate the distribution of publications between countries, we consider the distribution of publications is unlikely to be markedly different from a more comprehensive search of the literature. Clearly, the stage of development, which to a large extent is defined by the per capita gross national income, determines the ability of a country to undertake research on occupational health problems.
These data illustrate the enormous absence of knowledge about the occupational health conditions in the developing world.
In many cases, when conducting research studies in LEDCs, relevant data and knowledge of comparable industries from more economically developed nations are used as a proxy for local conditions and assumptions are made about the comparability of the data. Many health impact assessments take this approach as well as original research 7. However, work situations can differ vastly between LEDCs and more industrialised nations. A larger proportion of total employment in LEDCs consists of an informal workforce comprising self-employed, household-based unpaid labour and other cottage industries or small to medium sized enterprises fewer than 50 employees.
Informal workplaces are more difficult to regulate and can often have exemptions from a duty to comply with national occupational safety and health legislation. Under these circumstances more manual work practices are likely to be encountered, and with older machines where there is mechanisation, which could result in higher exposures in comparison to conditions in more industrialised nations.
Products like coffee, bananas, sugar and tea are grown by these 'third world countries' or LEDC's. Poverty, poverty is when people have a lack of an essential need like food or money. Places in South East Asia more likely to be high in poverty.
The demand for medical treatment is challenging but somehow even in poor countries a few people manage to cure and help large groups of diseased and sick ridden poor people that live among us and even in MEDC's as well as LEDC's. At first the parents or older children get sick and then become too ill to work and the family grows deeper and deeper into poverty then when the older child or parents die the children are left to fend for themselves and they often die to as a consequence to starvation or malnourishment.
Charities like Oxfam or Red Cross not only take orphans or abandoned children are given a better start or a new beginning to life than they could have wished for. In the past, support measures have tended to be conceived at the inter-governmental level or by developed countries in collaboration with international agencies; yet ownership is critical. A detailed and careful process of consultation needs to be undertaken, with types of support measure tailored to specific situations.
Whilst the eventual outcome of any such consultation process is uncertain, it seems appropriate that any support measures should place greater emphasis on building domestic savings and investment and on stimulating domestic demand with a view to the development of environmentally-sustainable productive capacities which have a direct bearing on poverty reduction, in addition to global economic integration. New types of support measures applicable to one or more country clusters may include some of the following options:.
Perhaps more importantly, in addition to international support, developed countries may need to consider the impact of rules, practices or mechanisms in the international system which prevent LDCs from following their chosen sustainable development path.
The economic volatility that originates in the developed world, such as that experience during the crisis, can have severe repercussions on LDCs. Measures to ensure economic stability, which is in the best interests of almost everyone, would be one of the best ways of supporting LDCs. The impacts of tax havens, carbon emissions, farm subsidies and immigration restrictions vastly outweigh any existing international support.
Whilst this is only a preliminary analysis listing a few possible areas, and much more needs to be done, it is important to recognize the need for a new approach and to think of new ways of supporting least developed countries as well as limiting the negative impact of policies and actions in the developed world. Ten LDC graduations in half a century is too few. Hopefully the emerging literature on sustainable development, as well as the direct experiences of prospering LDCs, will provide lessons for other countries which want to leave the category, and for the international community in general.
Cornia, G. Scognamillo Clusters of Least Developed Countries, their evolution between and , and policies to expand their productive capacity, Committee for Development Policy Background Paper no. Lin, J. Ocampo J. Welcome to the United Nations. Sign in.
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