Expert Calls For Public Health Response To Injuries In Workplaces

Nigeria’s workplaces may be recording fewer dramatic headlines than fires or explosions as crisis is also brewing in offices, hospitals and workshops with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), the back, neck, shoulder, knee and wrist injuries that build slowly until workers can no longer lift, stand, drive, or even sleep without pain.

An expert in Occupational Safety and Public Health, Treasure Nkemdilim James, said MSDs should be treated as a workplace public health priority, not an individual complaint.

James who recently participated as a country expert supporting the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva on a global policy review of psychosocial hazards and risks, argued  that the country is losing productivity and pushing families into hardship through preventable exposures, including manual handling, repetitive work, awkward postures, prolonged standing or sitting, and poorly designed tools and workstations.

She maintained that training programmes in occupational safety increasingly treat MSDs, manual handling and cumulative trauma disorders as core risk areas, reflecting their scale and impact.

“People think of workplace harm as one ‘big accident,’ but MSDs are often death by a thousand cuts,” James said.

“A worker may not fall from height today, but the work design can still damage their body every day, until they can’t work, and the family income suffers.

MSDs include injuries and conditions affecting muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and nerves, commonly presenting as low-back pain, neck and shoulder strain, knee pain, or wrist and hand problems linked to repetitive motion”.

James also noted that in Nigeria, the risk is everywhere: warehouse staff lifting loads without mechanical aids; healthcare workers repositioning patients; construction and fabrication workers bending, kneeling and carrying; and office staff sitting for long hours with poorly set-up screens and chairs.

“If we only talk about PPE and ignore work design, we are missing the most common reason many people develop long-term pain,” she said.

She insisted  that the solution is not to tell workers to “be careful” or to stretch once a month during a wellness seminar, instead, she frames MSD prevention as a public health intervention to identify risk early, reduce exposure, and redesign environments so safer behaviour becomes the default.

According to James, the first step is ergonomic risk assessment that focuses on reality, not

paperwork, which tasks involve heavy lifting, frequent bending, long standing, repeated

reaching, vibration, or sustained sitting; which roles are rushing; what tools or layouts force

awkward postures; and where fatigue makes people improvise.

“If your job requires constant bending, the question is not ‘why is the worker bending?’ The question is ‘why is the system designed that way?’” she said.

The expert further said organisations should prioritise changes that reduce exposure at the

source, mechanical aids for lifting, trolleys and pallet jacks where possible, job rotation for repetitive tasks, sensible staffing, and layout changes that reduce reaching and twisting.

James further emphasised basic but often-ignored controls, such as weight limits, team lifting rules, and simple redesigns of storage heights to prevent heavy items from being stored at floor

level.

She pointed to manual handling as a key intervention area because it is both common

and highly preventable.

James also highlighted “cumulative trauma,” where minor strains build into chronic pain arguing that managers often misread early symptoms as laziness or poor attitude.

“Workers report discomfort early, then they’re ignored or mocked, and they keep pushing until it becomes an injury,” she said.

According to her, Professional OSH curricula increasingly treat cumulative trauma disorders as a distinct prevention area, alongside ergonomics and manual handling, because early action is the difference between discomfort and disability.

For office-based industries, James warned that long hours behind screens are not “safe” simply

because they look clean.

She added that poor chair support, screens set too low or too high, static sitting, and high-pressure targets can produce neck and back pain and repetitive strain injuries.

“If your staff sit for 8-12 hours with no breaks and no ergonomic setup, you are manufacturing pain,” she said.

“That pain doesn’t remain personal. It becomes absenteeism, reduced performance,

medical costs, and sometimes resignation.”

The expert further pointed out that the most credible prevention programmes include worker participation, asking workers what tasks hurt, when the pain starts, and what would make the task easier, then using that information to redesign the work.

She submitted that as a way forward MSD programme should be measured like any other operational system: track early discomfort reports, review injury trends, and verify whether changes reduced exposure.

James urged employers to embed MSD prevention into their management systems rather than treating it as a side topic, noting  that organisations already running structured safety systems can include ergonomic hazards in the same cycle.

She also called on regulators, professional bodies and training institutions to treat MSDs as an urgent national occupational challenge.