Evaluation of underreporting occupational accidents among workers who handle laboratory animals.

Introduction: Occupational accidents pose a substantial health risk and represent a critical public health concern. While reporting occupational accidents is legally mandated, occupational accidents are significantly underreported, leading to institutional challenges and obstacles in planning and implementing preventive policies.

Objectives: To evaluate how often workers who handle laboratory animals report their occupational accidents at the Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia em Biomodelos/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz and to correlate this rate with their possible causes.

Methods: This is an observational cohort study including workers who handle laboratory animals at the Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia em Biomodelos/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Data were collected from questionnaires that these workers filled in and then compared to the accident records reported to the Núcleo de Saúde do Trabalhador (Brazil Workers' Health Center) between 2014 and 2019. We used the Research Electronic Data Capture for data entry and Stata 14 for statistical analysis.

Results: Occupational accidents were underreported by 44.8% of the workers who handle laboratory animals at the Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia em Biomodelos/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. The characteristics of those who mostly underreported were women (63.6%), of mixed-race (55.6%), 35-44 years old (53.3%), with a doctorate degree (80%), and permanently employed (50%). The most common types of occupational accident reported in the questionnaires were scratches (17.2%) and bites (13.8%), while the most common injuries recorded were cuts (26.7%) and trips/falls (17.8%). Reasons for non-notification were apparent minor severity (57.2%), unwillingness to report (14.3%), no specific protocol to treat (14.3%), excessive bureaucracy (7.1%), and high occurrence (7.1%).

Conclusions: The underreporting rate of occupational accidents is 44.8% at the Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia em Biomodelos/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Workers' awareness of the importance and compulsory nature of reporting should be raised to reduce this rate.