Occupational Physician

Romania, a former Communist country (1948-1989), joined the European Union on January 1, 2007.
For this purpose, it completed a process of harmonizing the entire legislation on occupational health and safety with that of the European Union, but the application of this legislation in practice lags well behind. It is said that the current situation is similar to that of the developed countries some years ago. But there is a big difference: then most practitioners, industrialists and decision-makers were genuinely ignorant about occupational health risks. Currently the information systems and the communication infrastructure are so well developed that ignorance is no longer an excuse for anyone.

Therefore what lacks now in Romania’s occupational health system is not the information, nor the legislation, but rather more pressure from the government, the worker organizations, the community advocacy groups, as well as more trained occupational health and safety specialists, to help reinforce the modern sound principles of occupational health and safety in workplaces.

Romania’s government is confused: under the pressure from the European Union, it adopted in 2006 a set of Decisions that translate EU Directives on occupational health and safety, which is great. But for instance currently, under political pressure from certain giant economic units, looking forward to cut off costs and preserve the current situation, the government is about to back off, to allow workers medical surveillance to be conducted by physicians with only a 200 hours course training in occupational medicine, instead of occupational physicians trained by a 4-year long residency.

Worker organizations seem to be little interested in occupational health and safety, focusing on getting higher wages rather than on having working conditions improved, preferring a bonus for risky working conditions instead of elimination of those risks.

Due to hard economic conditions, most large industrial complexes broke down to smaller units, with fewer workers and older technology, where occupational health and safety principles are hard to impose and follow.

Occupational health specialists are few, currently there are about 350 occupational physicians in Romania and very few industrial hygienists, employed both in the public and private sectors, which is obviously insufficient for a population of 21.6 million inhabitants. It was estimated that about 1,300 occupational physicians would be required. In order to fill in this lack of specialists, some 2,500 physicians (GPs) received a short-term training in occupational medicine (200 hours course), but their activity was predictably suboptimal. Other several hundreds physicians are currently in training in occupational medicine by residency and expected to start working within a few years.

The results of this situation are well visible: a low prevalence of occupational diseases, well beyond the EU average, due to non-identification and under-reporting of these diseases, even in the context of more hazardous working conditions.