History of Occupational Health in Mexico and Latin America

Introduction
During colonial age, it was forbidden to carry workers from hot to cold place and viceversa; they had physician; injured people received half pay; children weren´t carry goods; miner´s parents died by accidents at work received money and coffin by that.

Methods
Since 1947, in Lima, there were experts from Institute of Interamerican Issues (USA) organized the Occupational Health in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, made risk evaluation, exposed problems about occupational health, creating institutions in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Cuba. With international support and the Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO) they got equipment, infrastructure and professional training, turning in reference and training centers.

Results
In Peru was founded the Institute of Occupational Health, a pioneer in starting personal training. Supported by the United Nations Special Fund and PAHO, it was founded the Institute of Occupational Hygiene and Atmospheric Pollution from Chile, starting in 1965 there were courses to engineers, physicians and chemist from continent, creating demand for professionals and universities academic programs, and obligation to establish occupational health services in companies.

Discussion
In the early twentieth century workers' strikes demanding better working conditions, creating laws prohibiting child labor, recognizing occupational diseases, forcing employers to pay wages to injure, defines disabilities in complete, temporal and perpetual. The current Constitution responsible to the heads of accidents and illnesses, and forces them to prevent. Jorge Fernandez Osorio, a pioneer of occupational health in Mexico, was a physician at the factory; he studied the master degree of Industrial Medicine Kettering Institute of the University of Cincinnati, he creates the leadership and medical speciality of occupational medicine at the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, the Health Unit at Work in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. For four decades, he advised workers and unions of electricians, telephone workers, miners, air traffic controllers and universities