Incidence of occupational dust-caused lung damage declining

The annual number of newly reported cases of pneumoconiosis－dust-caused lung damage that includes silicosis－is on the decline in China and patients can now access better treatment thanks to a series of measures such as establishing a targeted database and expanding the provision of therapies, the National Health Commission said on Monday.

The lung-destroying condition is the most common occupational disease in China, affecting primarily construction and mining workers.

Because symptoms such as severe shortness of breath only surface after an incubation period of at least 10 years, and many patients are migrant workers who move around a lot without official labor contracts, it is very difficult to confirm the relationship between their occupations and the disease, according to authorities.

"It is thus challenging to get a clear count of pneumoconiosis patients in China," Li Tao, chief expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news briefing.

A significant campaign devoted to cataloging existing patients and preventing new cases was launched in July 2019. It found that there were about 888,000 work-related pneumoconiosis cases in China in 2019, according to Wu Zongzhi, director of the commission's occupational health department.

The latest data show that by the end of 2021, China had reported 915,000 pneumoconiosis patients in total, including 450,000 who were living with the disease, according to the commission.

Last year, China detected about 11,810 new pneumoconiosis cases, down by 51 percent from the level in 2012.

"It has shown that the high incidence of key occupational diseases, including pneumoconiosis, has been effectively curbed in China," Wu said.

The commission has joined efforts with the Ministry of Finance since 2010 to set up 671 pneumoconiosis rehabilitation facilities adjacent to rural or community health care centers.

They are now distributed in 28 provincial-level regions, said Fan Jingguang, head of the commission's occupational health center.

About 170,000 patients are able to receive traditional Chinese medicine therapies, athletic rehabilitation and psychological relief there, he added.

"Even though the disease is considered incurable, its condition can be relieved through therapies and convalescence programs, so as to improve the lives of patients and enable them to take care of themselves," he said.

Li, from the China CDC, said that in the future more effort will be devoted to making it easier to confirm diagnoses of occupational diseases, including pneumoconiosis.

Wu, the commission official, added that it will launch more campaigns to crack down on factories and enterprises that expose their workers to dangerous levels of dust, noise or chemicals.