Factors Associated with Occupational Injury among Hydropower Dam Construction Workers, South East Ethiopia, 2018

Abstract

Background. Occupational injuries pose a major public health and socioeconomic developmental problems. Globally, 160 million people encounter occupational injuries; the International Labour Organization estimates that the cost is 4% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) or 1.25 trillion United States Dollar (USD). The second-largest number of occupational injuries was reported from the construction industries. There are limited studies about the prevalence and factors associated with occupational injuries among dam construction workers in Ethiopia. Hence, this study was undertaken to determine the prevalence and associated factors of occupational injury among Genale Dawa hydropower dam construction workers. Method. Institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Genale Dawa 3D hydropower dam construction project from April 1 to 22, 2018. Four hundred and five workers were included in the study. An Oromiffa version pretested, semistructured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data were entered into Epi-info version 7, and analysis was done using SPSS version 20 software. Bivariable and multivariate binary logistic regression was used to see the association between predictors and the dependent variable. The 95% CI and adjusted odds ratio with a P value of 0.05 was used to fit the final model. Results. The prevalence of occupational injuries in the earlier 12 months before the study was 57.8% with (95% CI (52.8, 62.7)). Age, educational status, alcohol consumption, job stress, work shift, and working hours per week were factors significantly associated with occupational injury. Conclusion and recommendation. Occupational injuries were common among dam construction workers. Conducting regular monitoring of substance abuse, avoiding overtime work, rotation of the work shift, and considering age and the educational status during employee recruitment can be effective to decrease the prevalence of occupational injuries.

Prevalence of occupational injury and determination of safety climate in small scale manufacturing industry: A cross-sectional study

“…The possibility is the variation in types of manufacturing industries involved in this study compared to a single type of manufacturing industry in the previous study. The study showed a significant association between working hours in a week and occupational injury (χ 2 = 7.331, p = 0.007), similar findings were demonstrated [ 8 ]. Workers who worked more than 48 h are 2.3 times more likely to have an occupational injury than those who worked equal or fewer than 48 h.…”

Occupational injury prevalence and predictors among small-scale sawmill workers in the Sokoban Wood Village, Kumasi, Ghana

“…The multivariable logistic regression analysis included all variables, both statistically significant (p ≤ 0.05) and non-significant variables in the univariate regression. The non-significant variables including age, work experience, cadre of work, work hours per week, provision of PPE and level of education were included in the model because they have been reported in the literature to have a significant effect on the occurrence of occupational injuries [ 17 , 18 , 34 , 35 ]. A backward stepwise regression analysis (at p = 0.05) was used to control the non-significant variables that were deemed important.…”

Evaluation of Occupational Safety in the Operation and Maintenance Activities of Dams

“…When the "type of injury" variable was examined, it is found that "drowning" and "falling from height" were the prime causes of accidents with data showing 34.1% and 14.8% frequencies, respectively. According to Hussen et al (2020) falling from height is the most common type of injury in dam construction [25]. It is also observed from the studies that asphyxia (29.5%) and fractures (13.6%) were the most encountered injuries.…”

“…Based on the various studies [21][22][23][24], it is concluded that rate of severe accidents and fatal accidents that occur in dam construction very high and alarming when compared to other construction sites. Hussen et al (2020) revealed that the annual occupational injury prevalence of the dam construction site was 57.8% [25]. Further, Yılmaz and Başağa (2018) also stated that dam constructions are the second most hazardous construction site where accidents occur at a rate of 19.6% [23].…”

“…Further, Yılmaz and Başağa (2018) also stated that dam constructions are the second most hazardous construction site where accidents occur at a rate of 19.6% [23]. It is noted that existing research on the subject only focuses more on surveys or observation studies [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Although it is useful to conduct surveys and use descriptive statistics, using information, such as how the accident occurred and who was involved is not always sufficient to identify the most important contributing factors.…”