Introduction: The authors present a survey on the incidence of occupational infectious and parasitic diseases in the Czech Republic.
Materials and methods: Between 1996 and 2000, occupational infectious and invasive diseases were diagnosed in 1906 patients. This is about 18% of the total number of diagnosed cases in the period under study. The total number of the diagnosed diseases included 68% of those occurring due to interhuman transmission, 29% of zoonoses and 3% of tropical diseases. The majority of occupational infectious diseases developed in health care workers (66%). This was followed by agriculture, game management and forestry workers (20%). In the group of sick workers, women outnumbered men (74% vs. 26%). The mean age of those affected was 39.2 +/- 11.9, range, 16-79 years.
Results: Scabies, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis predominated in the group of transmitted diseases and trichophytoses, erysipeloid and Lyme borreliosis among zoonoses. During the whole period of investigation, scabies occupied the first place among occupational infectious diseases. The increased incidence of diseases is mostly due to epidemics in the general population, and its spread is attributed to a low hygiene and social standards, overcrowding, increased migration that creates a higher risk for the elderly, mentally retarded and immunocompromised subjects. In tropical and subtropical countries, contract workers suffered mostly from malaria, amebiasis and infectious hepatitis A.
Conclusions: It was possible to clearly identify occupational infectious and parasitic disease in different working conditions. The results of the survey confirm that infectious and parasitic diseases still create a difficult problem especially among health care and agriculture or forestry workers.