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The World Health Organisation has recognised
the Sri Ramachandra University (SRU) as its Collaborating Centre
in Occupational Health. This is only the second such centre in
India after the National Institute of Occupational Health,
Ahmedabad, and third in South East Asia after the Ministry of
Public Health, Bangkok, to get such recognition.
Earlier this year, the International Labour
Organisation recognised Sri Ramachandra University as its
collaborating centre, giving it the unique distinction of being
the only centre in India meriting such a dual recognition from
two premier UN organisations involved in this discipline.
The Department of Environmental Health
Engineering at SRU will operate the centre. Prof Kalpana
Balakrishnan will be its director. The recognition has been
granted keeping in mind SRU’s distinguished track record of
research, training and service in the field of occupational
health and safety and contributions to the WHO global agenda for
occupational safety and health.
With a workforce of over 630 million in the
South East Asia region, WHO collaborating centres play a key
role in enabling countries to fulfil their global occupational
health strategies and ensure safe working conditions. The Sri
Ramachandra University has been involved with local, national
and international agencies on numerous initiatives concerning
improvements in occupational safety and health standards in
diverse workplace settings in organised manufacturing and
service industries and small and medium enterprises over the
last decade.
As part of its action plan, the SRU Centre
will, over the next four years, expand its short-term,
certificate, postgraduate and doctoral training programmes in
occupational medicine, industrial hygiene and safety. It will
also engage in multi-centric research projects that will create
sector-specific profiles of occupational hazards; develop tool
boxes to recognise and control exposures, provide technical and
laboratory services for conducting exposure and health risk
assessments and deliver basic occupational health services
through the primary health care network in the rural areas.
Disseminating available information through
networked databases, providing reliable technical advice for
reducing occupational health problems and improving human
resource capacities in this important domain of public health
will be the focal areas for activities of the centre.
The centre will be formally inaugurated in
September 2007 in the presence of WHO officials.
R Rangaraj
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