An evaluation of musculoskeletal disorder and socioeconomic status of farmers in West Bangal, India.

ABSTRACT

Rice cultivation contains several tasks and workers were compelled to adopt some harmful and awkward posture during performing those tasks. These type repetitive jobs may be related to occupational health hazards like musculoskeletal disorder (MSD). In the present investigation different MSD related problems of the workers have been assessed and also identify the socioeconomic status of the farmers considering the issues of community health development. In this connection a simple and easily applicable questionnaire technique has been apply in the agricultural field during performing rice cultivation tasks. The results showed that a large number of workers could not complete their primary education (33.0% to 43.0%) and remained below the poverty line (91.3%). From the MSD assessment lower back problem was prevalent (48.8%) among the workers when all rice cultivation tasks were consider together, but it was extremely prevalent in reaping job (92.0%) and transplantation job (84.0%). It was concluded that MSD among the workers might be related to the stressful work posture, long duration jobs, nature of jobs and use of ill-fitted hand tools. So, some free-hand exercise, proper work-rest scheduled and awareness program may be helpful for reducing the MSD and proper handling of hand tools.