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Accident / Incident and Ill-Health Data Rates

 Incident data can be used to support hazard identification, risk assessment and risk factor. Some of the accidents data collected is used to generate the statistics required by legislation but other uses are to:

  • Classify industries according to risk.
  • Classify workplaces.
  • Classify occupations.
  • Consider accident trends.
  • Consider accident trends.
  • Consider part of the body injured - use of protective clothing.
  • Use ' Cause of injury' to determine hazards in a workplace.
  • Consider where the fault lies.
  • Measure the effect of preventive / control measure.
It can sometimes be difficult to obtain and interpret such information.

Accident and Disease Ratios

In making comparisons between various industries, or between work areas in the same factory, it is useful to consider the commonly used accident and disease rates. Following are some Calculations

Incidence Rate

Incidence reflects the number of new cases in relation to the number at risk.
This is Calculated from:
                                                Number of work-related injuries x 1,000
                                                Average number of persons employed

It is a measure of the number of injuries per 1,000 employees and is usually calculated over a period of time, e.g. a year.
It is often applied to discrete events, such as accidents.

Frequency Rate

This can be calculated from:

                                                Number of Work- related Injuries x 100,000
                                                Total number of man-hours worked

It is a measure of the number of accidents per 100,000 hours worked.

Severity Rate

This is:
                                                Total number of days lost x 1,000
                                                Total number of man-hours worked

It is a measure of the average number of days lost per 1,000 hours worked.

Prevalence Rate

Prevalence is a term often used to describe ill health in terms of the proportion of persons who have the prescribed ill-health condition at a particular time.

It can be calculated from:

                      Total number of cases of ill health in the population x 100
                                  Total number of persons at risk

This calculation will give the percentage of the population with the disease.

The calculations above will help professionals in their daily work routine. It will further, enables them to calculate and trace the safety trend of the organization. 

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