AT A RECENT NEWS CONFERENCE, the Healthy China Promotion Commission, an agency affiliated to the National Health Commission, said that certain diseases such as cervical spondylosis are becoming increasingly common among office workers. The commission's experts also proposed to add these diseases to the list of occupational diseases. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

Whenever the phrase "occupational disease" appears, people always think about the pneumoconiosis of miners or the leukaemia of indoor decoration workers.

That's because in the past less emphasis was placed on health and safety and workers doing hazardous jobs lacked proper protection. However, working conditions have been constantly improving and the number of people doing hazardous jobs has been falling. As a result, the number of people with occupational diseases such as pneumoconiosis or leukaemia has declined.

But new health problems have been afflicting office workers. It is easy to name some very common ones; as well as cervical spondylosis, office workers also suffer from high blood pressure and myopia, as well as stomach diseases because they eat too much fast food that contains too much oil, salt and sugar. Actually, people have long been joking that these diseases are occupational diseases even though they are not officially identified as such.

The experts' proposal this time echoes the call of the public, and we hope these calls will be heeded, because, if so, the State will invest more in the prevention and treatment of these occupational diseases, and workers who get these diseases will get better medical insurance policies.

Further, the list of occupational diseases should be routinely updated. Work conditions change as the nature of work changes. Updating the list of occupational diseases will ensure that the national medical resources are efficiently used.