Public Health Approaches to The Health Care of Coal Miners in Developing Countries

Public health approaches to the health care of coal miners is one of the most important problems in developing countries like India and China, which are the main coal producer countries over the world. China produced about 3.6 billion tonnes of coal in 2012, 47% of the world’s total coal production and India produced approximately 605Mt of coal in 2012, after this fact it became the third biggest coal producer in the world. Also the important fact is that, Coal represents about 68% of India’s electricity generation.

Coal miners are individuals who work and spend the majority of their day tunneling and digging coal from the mines. This kind of life and working style can have serious negative impact on their health and may even lead to their deaths.

Nowadays, the number death toll of miners from China, India and other developing countries rather than developed countries, for example death toll of mineworkers in USA is increasing. The main causes of death are accidents,disaster, there are a lot of killed miners with cancer caused by mining.

The statistics show that this problem is not approached correctly by the health care department in said countries, and should be changed.

According to research, Chinese miners are 350 times more likely to die at their workplace than their American or British counterparts. They are often injured, by having their arms broken, fingers crushed, hands split open by picks and shoulders broken by falling rocks. Others suffer from broken ribs, lung diseases and damaged internal organs.

Other researches show that in Indian Coal mines, like Jharkhand, they have miners working on multiple floors. These miners have to work and operate the mine for 24 hours, a factor that seriously impacts their health.

This issue is a big problem not only in developing countries, but in all countries and regions which can produce coal, like Germany, Ukraine, USA, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Indonesia. 1 But in the developing countries the issue is more serious, though, since their Public health department has some of the means to prevent at least part of the problems in the mines and ensure the miners’ safety, but they do not have as many means as developed countries like the USA, for example Queensland government created Coal Mine Workers' Health Scheme, which helps them to protect miner health perfectly, also in Utah, there special hospital for miners to provide their health care.

The basic Idea of this research is to identify what public health approaches are being taken in developing countries (focusing on China & India) and to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of said approaches to

compare which of them has better results for the coal miners.

Research Methods

The main and most important questions which are asked: What is the public health approach, which is being taken to ensure the health care of coal miners in China and India? Besides this, In order to evaluate the effectiveness of said approaches, there must be first analased to see what they consist of. After stuffing this there must be said which one out of the two has better outcomes?

Analyzing both approaches and comparing them can show how effective they are, and which one is more effective.

Inclusion Criteria

The Literature was chosen according following criteria: only articles which are about coal miners, who are people working just in developing countries, exactly China and India. The research methods based on questionnaires, observational or case studies of Chineese and Indian miners. All articles which are necessary for ensure and clear main concept of this research had to be made basically in English.