Socioeconomic and demographic profile of occupational morbidity and mortality in Brazil from 2009 to 2016

Abstract

Occupational accidents occur as a result of work, and can lead to bodily harm or functional impairments that lead to death, or to the reduction or loss of working capacity. Occupational accidents are associated with two possible outcomes: morbidity or mortality. Morbidity refers to the subset of a population that develops an illness over a given period of time, while mortality refers to the number of individuals who die over a specified time period. To assess occupational morbidity and mortality in Brazil in the period of 2009 to 2016. An ecological study was conducted based on secondary data collected from incident records in the Social Security database. The outcomes of all occupational accidents reported in Brazil from 2009 to 2016 were extracted from the database. These data were then classified by geographical region and category in the National Classification of Economic Activities (Classificação Nacional de Atividades Econômicas), so as to calculate the prevalence of each outcome and the accident mortality rates, and compare these values across regions and occupational categories. The data show that the outcomes of occupational accidents are directly associated with socioeconomic sectors and the sociocultural characteristics of different regions in the country. These results make an important contribution to the characterization of occupational morbidity and mortality in Brazil.