Occupational Injuries Among Road Construction Workers In Ghana: Burden, Mechanism And Severity

Abstract

Objective: Road construction work involves diverse activities relying on the use of both skilled and unskilled manpower, posing serious risks to workers. This study sought to determine the burden, mechanism and severity of occupational injuries among road construction workers. Methodology: The study design was institution-based descriptive cross-sectional using a questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions. From Ashanti, Ahafo and Western North regions, 353 road workers reported on work-related injuries, types of injury, body parts injured, day(s) lost to activity and cause of injury from 27th January, 2020 to 4th March, 2020. Results: The workers were primarily young (mean age 32.4 years) and male (97.7%). Most (70.2%) workers were contract/casual staff. Nearly 88% experienced injury the past year with 67.5% experiencing multiple injuries. The body parts most affected included waist/low back (29.9%), forearm/palm (18.9%), leg/foot (17.5%), chest (8.9%) and joints (7.1%). Mechanism of injury included slips/trips (18.5%), use of tools/equipment (13.8%) and overexertion during lifting (10.2%). For injury severity, 88.0% of workers had minor injuries, 8.8% moderate and 3.2% severe injuries. Conclusion: There is high burden of injury among road construction workers in Ghana. Most experienced injury during the past year, with over 4-in-5 having minor injuries. Leading mechanisms were slips/trips, use of tools/equipment and overexertion during lifting. Limitations include biases like memory decay, purposive selection of construction sites and driver over-representation. Hence, recommendations deriving from this study include enforcement of personal protective equipment use, proficiency training in use of tools/equipment and inter-lacing manual handling-related activities with activities that vary worker-postures.