Main European models of workers' health protection.

Health protection at work is not only a matter of national policy and legislation. For many years, standards for occupational safety and health (OSH) have been elaborated at an international level. Organizations, such as International Labor Organization (ILO), World Health Organization (WHO), and also Council of Europe and European Economic Community (currently European Union-EU) have been active in this field for a long time. There are also many other organizations and institutions which are involved, e.g: International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. In the past, workers' health protection (WHP) as provided by physicians, was a part of general health care rather than a part of complex system built on different assumptions. Even in the second half of the 20th century, many European countries designed their WHP mainly from medical point of view. Although no European country established occupational health services (OHSs) to be merely curative, in some countries, especially in central and eastern Europe (CCEE), it was a case. Medical examinations carried out by any physician in some countries, or authorised physician in other countries, were and still are considered to be the most important activity of OHSs. Although both the adjustment of work to man and of man to work was included in the wide definition of occupational health, jointly worked out by ILO and WHO in 1950 1) , the trend has been more and more to establish priorities on the adjustment of work to man. In 1985 the ILO adopted the Convention on Occupational Health Services 2) which can be considered as a cornerstone in establishing new trends in OHS. The term " OHS " means services entrusted with essentially preventive function and responsible for advising the employer, the workers and their representatives in the undertakings on: (i) the requirement for establishing and maintaining a safe and healthy work environment which will facilitate optimal physical and mental health in relation to work; and (ii) the adaptation of work to the capabilities of workers in the light of their state of physical and mental health. Assessing well-known functions of OHSs it is worth noting that stress has been put on primary rather than on secondary or tertiary prevention. According to the Glossary which has been included into the ILO Guidelines 1, 2) " workers' health surveillance " does not necessary mean medical examination carried out by physician. It reads as …