The Hazardous Working Conditions of Rural Women

25 ONE of the most neglected areas of health research is that involving effects of accidents and injuries on the lives of rural populations. A vast majority of the epidemiological studies on health of rural populations have concentrated on infectious diseases. In these studies the problems of women are clubbed together as those falling within the ambit of maternal and child health. A study done about 30 years ago revealed that accidental injuries are also a serious health problem in rural areas of India1. However, this study did not pinpoint any specific problems suffered by women in particular. In any event, no other researchers since then have included injuries as a part of detailed health investigations in rural India. In this article we report the preliminary results of a study conducted by the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in collaboration with the Centre for Community Health and Social Medicine at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. As a part of this study, detailed health records of a population of 3,500 families were maintained in nine villages of Sonipat district of Haryana for one year. The data reported here concern injuries sustained by all females in the study population. In the study period of one year there were a total of 2,059 injuries in the study population. A reportable injury was defined as one which prevented an individual from participating in normal activities for a day or more. These data were collected by specially trained field workers who visited every home once in two weeks. Injuries involving females comprised 624 (30.4 percent) of the total. The distribution of injuries by type of activity and age is shown in Table 1. Table 2 shows the distribution by cause The Hazardous Working Conditions of Rural Women