High cost of illness to EU employers stressed

Employers in Europe lose 600 million working days every year due to diseases such as obesity and mental illness, the EU commissioner for Health, Mr David Byrne, has said.

Speaking at a conference on workplace health in Dublin yesterday, Mr Byrne encouraged companies to initiate programmes to combat staff health problems including smoking, back injuries, high cholesterol, obesity and mental illness.

"Obesity can be tackled successfully in the workplace. Twenty-six per cent of employees who participate in programmes on weight control are able to maintain their weight 12 months after the programme has finished."

Workplace stop smoking programmes were successful in 10 to 15 per cent of cases, he said. "In light of these figures, the workplace could become the cornerstone in the fight against the single largest cause of avoidable death in Europe."

There is a "sound correlation" he said, between the quality of work and the rate of morbidity. A European Foundation study of the former 15 EU member-states showed that 28 per cent of workers suffered from stress-related health problems.

"Anger, depression and stress at work are closely related to job satisfaction. On top of that, depression is often an underlying factor which generates secondary problems such as cancer, cardiac condition, muscular skeleton disorders and pain syndromes."

Companies could also tackle high cholesterol and cardiovascular diseases through "better staff nutrition" and regular blood pressure assessments.

The number of days lost to work-related illness gave employers an economic incentive to introduce workplace health policies, Mr Byrne said.

"Health enhances economic prosperity. Or to summarise it - health equals wealth."

Working could also enhance people's health, he said. "We know that in our member-states regularly employed citizens do better in health than citizens who do not permanently have a secure job."

Employers had the opportunity to improve the health of the underprivileged, he said, by balancing the health deficiencies they faced outside the workplace.