By VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG

INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation,ILO, yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland, called for an “urgent and vigorous” global campaign to tackle the growing number of work-related diseases, which claim an estimated two million lives annually.

Director-General of ILO, Guy Ryder, in a statement issued for the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, said: “Occupational disease impoverishes workers and their families and may undermine whole communities when they lose their most productive workers.

“Meanwhile, the productivity of enterprises is reduced and the financial burden on the state increases as the cost of health care rises. Where social protection is weak or absent, many workers and their families, lack the care and support they need.”

Ryder said prevention was the key to tackling the burden of occupational diseases, and more effective and less costly than treatment and rehabilitation. He said the ILO was calling for a “paradigm of prevention with comprehensive and coherent action targeting occupational diseases, not only injuries.”

Head of the International Organisation of Employers, IOE, Brent Wilton, said: “ILO is well placed to lead a concerted and holistic effort to address Occupational Health and Safety, OSH, challenges by providing integrated web-based information that is practical and easily accessible to workplace actors, prevention and treatment centres, employers’ and workers’ organisations, enforcing authorities and labour inspectorates.”