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Summary:
Zambia does not have prescriptive occupational health laws or guidelines and there are no occupational medicine or occupational nursing courses available within the country. There is a generic medical surveillance performed by a government mandated Institute, however, as First Quantum did not have detailed records of the medical surveillance it was not possible to determine if exposure controls at the mine were effective or if individual fitness of work matched the requirements for the job tasks. This presented a substantial business risk to the organisation so a formal occupational health programme was established to monitor their workforce of 10,000 employees. Return to work was also complicated by inadequate integration and communication between the departments and human resources, and a shortage of qualified occupational health personnel, complicated with a legislated period of six months paid sick leave allowed before medical separation could be considered.
The aim of the session describes the journey in establishing a quality occupational health service in Zambia for two mine sites while dealing with limited qualified human resource. In 2015, the service started from humble beginnings, operating from two small rooms doing routine generic medical assessments staffed by four people that had no occupational health qualifications. Presently they are a fully-fledged department of thirty-one staff working across three centres approaching occupational health through a risk based and multidisciplinary integrated system approach with three fully qualified occupational medicine doctors, and a work rehabilitation team. Two of their occupational health doctors have been developed through on the job training followed by university programmes from South Africa and are now mentoring future occupational health doctors. Return to work has been a key focus of interventions and the session will present the activities and results of the work rehabilitation team targeting back pain.
Speaker Bio:
Leonie Kloppers is a Zimbabwean national, who is currently the site health services superintendent for First Quantum mining and operations for their sites in Zambia. She has been working in Zambia for nine years in various roles after primarily qualifying as an occupational therapist through the university of Pretoria. After getting involved in managing occupational health, she subsequently did postgraduate studies in occupational health and safety through Curtin University in Perth. Her interest areas include proactive return to work management, back pain and functional capacity evaluations.
Chair: Dr Will Ponsonby
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