Acran Salmen-Navarro

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken many lives in the last two years. Handling high volumes of decedents within and beyond a hospital’s environment has put healthcare- and deathcare-workers at an increased health risk throughout this pandemic. However, systematic research about manual handling of the dead either at the hospital, morgue, funeral home, or in situations of mass fatalities is still in infancy. This session aims to educate ergonomics and safety professionals on the importance of understanding the risk factors associated with handling the decedents, design issues of body bags, effects of PPE, routine versus mass fatality handling of the decedents, and participatory ergonomics. This session will also examine the feasibility of translating the past and current research on the handling of live patients to the handling of patients postmortem. Finally, psychosocial risks due to handling the deceased within the pandemic environment that might influence these workers’ risk of musculoskeletal injuries will be deliberated.

The 2030 United Nations Goal 8 for sustainable development focuses on decent work. There is utility in identifying the occupational safety and health aspects of Goal 8, as they pertain to the four pillars of decent work: job creation, social protection, rights of workers, and social dialogue. A workgroup of the International Commission on Occupational Health and collaborators addressed the issue of decent work and occupational safety and health (OSH) with the objective of elaborating a framework for guidance for practitioners, researchers, employers, workers, and authorities. This article presents that framework, which is based on an examination of the literature and the perspectives of the workgroup. The framework encompasses the intersection of the pillars of decent (employment creation, social protection, rights of workers, and social dialogue) work with new and emerging hazards and risks related to various selected determinants: new technologies and new forms of work; demographics (aging and gender); globalization; informal work; migration; pandemics; and OSH policies and climate change. The OSH field will need an expanded focus to address the future of decent work. This focus should incorporate the needs of workers and workforces in terms of their well-being. The framework identifies a starting point for the OSH community to begin to promote decent work.