Epidemiology - Basic Epidemiology
2. Sources of Epidemiological Data
Morbidity records
In some countries morbidity records regarding health and safety
at work are available nationally. For example in Finland and Denmark there are registers
of hospital discharge covering all causes of disease.
In the UK under The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 certain types of accident and diseases must be reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), whilst industrial claims for prescribed diseases e.g. vibration white finger, occupational deafness, are reported to the Department of Social Security.
The recording of accidents varies from country to country, some reporting all accidents including minor ones, others only those that result in sick leave. It is only the fatal accidents that can be compared nationally. All of these records a re susceptible to inaccuracies for several reasons including failure to report or under reporting or mis-diagnosis, so that their value in epidemiological studies must be questionable. They can serve, however, to highlight problem areas that would warrant further investigation.
There are some specialist registers i.e. those relating to specific diseases; all of the Nordic countries, some European countries and some North American states have cancer registers many of which have been established for nearly fifty years.
It has been possible in some countries e.g. Sweden, Denmark and Finland, to study causal links between occupation and congenital malformations through special registers.
A census is a periodic review of the whole population in a country which may be taken every ten years or so, and among many other questions will normally include occupation and/or branch of industry in which the person works. The data that are produced are crude but have been linked with later morbidity data.