Occupational injuries are a public health problem, estimated to
kill more than 300,000 workers worldwide every year and to cause
many more cases of disability. We estimate the global burden of
fatal and non-fatal unintentional occupational injuries for the
year 2000. The economically active population (EAP) of about 2.9
billion workers was used as a surrogate of the population at
risk for occupational injuries. Occupational unintentional
injury fatality rates for insured workers, by country, were used
to estimate WHO regional rates. These were applied to regional
EAP to estimate the number of deaths. In addition to mortality,
the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost, which measure
both morbidity and mortality, were calculated for 14 WHO
regions. Worldwide, hazardous conditions in the workplace were
responsible for a minimum of 312,000 fatal unintentional
occupational injuries. Together, fatal and non-fatal
occupational injuries resulted in about 10.5 million DALYs; that
is, about 3.5 years of healthy l