Congress Final Declaratıon
The 1st International Congress on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) was organized by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality on 6-7 December 2017 at the Istanbul Hilton Bosphorus Congress Center and brought together national and international occupational safety and health experts, occupational physicians, academicians, public and private sector representatives, representatives of civil society organizations and researchers. More than 3.400 participants attended the event.
The congress comprised the following topics: OHS legislation and standards in Turkey and other countries, private and public sector approaches in OHS; OHS strategies in local governments, OHS applications, OHS policy challenges and deficiencies, proposals for OHS solutions, good practice examples, scientific researches and developments.
Parallel sessions were organized under the headings of central and local administration practices, management systems, employee health, law, technical, applicable and sustainable business models, current legislation, and application of international standards. In 4 halls the following sessions took place:
- Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems
- Occupational Health and Safety in Public and Private Governance
- Culture and Awareness in Occupational Health and Safety
- Employee Safety and Employee Health
A total of 90 invited speakers from Turkey and abroad were invited to 33 separate sessions in 2 days. In total 86 oral and 67 poster presentations were given of high academic quality.
In accordance with the mission of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, while perfecting the services that will meet unmet occupational health and safety needs with an institutional approach, studies which are focused to raise the quality of life and humanity are evaluated with academic experts from Turkey and abroad.
It is emphasized that policy stakeholders in the public and private domain, take up their responsibilities in order to stimulate the detection/diagnosis and prevention of occupational diseases and to make these practices part of a sustainable institutional culture.
While discussing occupational diseases with various dimensions during the Congress, it was argued that ‘problems of sports injuries being recorded as occupational accidents, problems of continuous head trauma such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy can be defined as occupational diseases’.
The ILO recommends the addition of a subset of traumatic occupational diseases to the physical agents sub-unit in the list of occupational diseases.
It is planned that in future the International Congress on Occupational Health and Safety will be organized in cooperation with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
During the congress, various trainings, events and fair areas related to occupational health and safety were provided and participants were separated from each other to achieve more intense professional discussions in smaller groups. It is aimed to further accelerate the various workshops and disseminations of awareness of work health and safety culture in the working life and in the society, reduction of work accidents and occupational diseases, loss of production and negative effects of these losses on the economy.
We would like to thank all those who contributed to the congress, all academicians and universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations and especially directors and employees of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Health Department.
Organizing Committee
