Healthcare :: WHO to set up second centre of excellence

The World Health Organisation will set up here its second centre of excellence for occupational health in India in collaboration with city-based Sri Ramachandra University (SRU).

The ‘WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Occupational Health’ will be inaugurated by Indian Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on the SRU campus tomorrow.

It would be a second such centre in India after the National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad and third in South East Asia after the Ministry of Public Health, Bangkok, WHO Occupational Health Group Head Dr Gerry Eijkemans told reporters here today.

According to a WHO estimate, about 85 per cent of workers across the world, a majority of them in South East Asia, do not having any access to occupational health service, she said.

Stressing the need for political will and policy framework to address workers’ occupational health problems, Eijkemans said WHO had set up 70 centres of excellence across the world in collaboration with institutions which had the capacity to conduct research and translate the knowledge into action.

WHO would provide technical expertise to the SRU as part of the five-year-long collaboration, devised under the international health organisation’s global work plan 2006-2010, she added.


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