“Occupational Health in Guatemala: Risks and Hopes”

Guatemala is a 13 million multiethnic Country, with a mainly young population, 51% is younger than 18 years and therefore going soon into labor market. Current OH situation in our Country is that, although certain good news, there are structural situations, as a lack of common efforts between national actors, that are delaying the topic. Other significant issues are: obsolete legislation,   lack of a national information system and lack of OH services and competent human resources. Regarding OH statistics, there is a lack of a standardized national system, resulting in sub registration of work related accidents and illnesses. The scare statistics available deal only with formal sector, covered by Social Security. We don’t know the OH situation of informal sector, as migrant, domestic workers or child labor. OH services are mainly provided by public Health services or Social Security, with general practitioners, therefore diagnostic and treatment is made without knowledge of the occupational background and current work activities of the patient; there is no link between illness and work. One of the reasons of this problem is that there is no specific OH training available within the Country.   Hopes  Although legal requirements are poorly accomplished, there is a growing concern of medium sized and big enterprises to provide some kind of OH services to their workers, either because there are multinationals and have to comply their own corporative policies or because they are searching some kind of international certifications, as ISO 9001 or OHSAS 18001. Another factor of this enterprise OH interest is the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), approved in 2006, which establishes environmental and Occupational requirements. On the other hand, there are local and regional organizations that are promoting projects and trying to join efforts in the same direction.