Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee Final Project Report The development of an occupational diseases database, to be managed by the Department of Minerals and Energy

Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee

Final Project Report

The development of an occupational

diseases database, to be managed by

the Department of Minerals and

Energy, to record morbidity and

mortality of occupational diseases in

the South African mining industry.

NG Torres, JE Boyce, Dr DF Barnes, Dr N White

and A du Plessis

Research Agency:

Graphic Mining Solutions International

(GMSI)

Project Number:

GEN 505

Date:

November 1998

2

Executive Summary

This research report addresses a need for a centralised database to record the occur-

rence of occupational diseases in the South African mining industry, together with the

morbidity and mortality of such diseases. The database will be used by the Director:

Occupational Medicine of the Department of Minerals and Energy, for research purposes.

This research will help to identify and classify problem areas in occupational disease

management, so that appropriate preventative measures can be investigated.

The occupational diseases database has been designed, together with the programs re-

quired to use it, and the layout of suitable data-entry forms for the use of the mining

industry in submitting details of disease occurrences. A data format has also been

documented for transferring data electronically from those mines that have data-capture

software for diseases.

The design was based on discussions with representatives of Employers, Labour and

Government.

Programming and testing of the database system was performed by the IT Section of the

Department of Minerals and Energy, with quality control by the Research Agency.

At present, it is not possible to analyse any correlation between diseases and causative

factors. It is therefore recommended that a project be initiated to design and implement an

occupational hygiene database system for this purpose. This should lead to the improve-

ment of the occupational hygienic condition of working environments found in the mining

industry, thus reducing the incidence and severity of occupational illnesses.

The research project team are listed in the following table.

Name

Organisation

Project Role

N.G. Torres

GMSI

Project Leader

J.E. Boyce

GMSI

Systems Architect

Dr D.F. Barnes

AngloGold Health Services

Health Consultant: Employer Interests

Dr N. White

UCT / Groote Shuur Hospital

Health Consultant: Labour Issues

A du Plessis

Turgis Consulting

Implementation Advisor

3

Preface

This is the final report comprising the output of research project GEN 505. It describes the

design of a South African Mines Occupational Disease Database system (“SAMODD”)

which will assist the DME and SIMRAC in the research of contaminant monitoring and

control strategies to improve occupational health in the South African mining industry.

Note: Appendix 1 contains the detailed technical design specifications of the database

system. As such, it will mainly interest those who require in-depth technical details

from an Information Technology perspective, rather than the average reader. The

specifications are included in this report because they represent the main

deliverable of the project.

Acknowledgements

The research agency wishes to express gratitude to SIMRAC for the opportunity to partici-

pate in project GEN 505, and for SIMRAC’s motivation and financial support of the project.

The assistance of the Department of Minerals and Energy in programming the computer

system, and in obtaining test data for the prototyping phase, is appreciated.

In addition, thanks are due to those who gave of their time in the project definition work-

shops and design reviews, and especially in the gathering of the test data, without which

the project could not have succeeded.

4

Table of Contents

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................. 2

Preface................................................................................................................................. 3

Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 3

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. 4

List of figures ........................................................................................................................ 5

List of tables ......................................................................................................................... 5

Glossary of abbreviations and terms..................................................................................... 6

1

Introduction...................................................................... 8

2

Sources of information..................................................... 8

3

Research methodology.................................................... 9

3.1

Initial research ........................................................................... 9

3.2

Preliminary design..................................................................... 9

3.3

Workshops ................................................................................ 9

3.4

Formal design.......................................................................... 10

3.5

Programming........................................................................... 10

3.6

Case studies............................................................................ 10

3.7

Presentation to MOHAC.......................................................... 11

3.8

Implementation........................................................................ 11

4

Background to design of the database system............... 13

4.1

Relevant Parliamentary Acts................................................... 13

4.2

Disease record contents ......................................................... 14

5

Overview of use of the database system ....................... 16

5.1

Data sources for disease data ................................................ 16

5.2

Disease record data input flow................................................ 17

5.3

Subsequent analysis of disease data ..................................... 18

6

Discussion on design of the Database System .............. 19

6.1

Shared SAMRASS Database Tables ..................................... 19

6.2

Code Lists ............................................................................... 19

6.3

Personal Identification Tables................................................. 21

6.4

Main Working Tables .............................................................. 22

6.4.1

Personal Disease Record................................................................................. 22

5

6.4.2

Occupational History ........................................................................................ 23

6.4.3

Annual Workforce............................................................................................. 23

6.5

Data Input................................................................................ 24

6.6

Data Volumes.......................................................................... 24

6.7

Output from the Database....................................................... 24

7

Testing of Prototype System.......................................... 24

8

Conclusions and Recommendations.............................. 26

8.1

Conclusions............................................................................. 26

8.1.1

Outputs............................................................................................................. 26

8.2

Recommendations .................................................................. 26

References ......................................................................................................................... 28

Appendix 1 ......................................................................................................................... 29

Design Specifications ......................................................................................................... 29

List of figures

Figure 4.1  Parliamentary Acts .......................................................................................13

Figure 4.2  Disease record attributes..............................................................................14

Figure 5.1  Data sources ................................................................................................16

Figure 5.2  Flow of work for data input ...........................................................................17

Figure 5.3

Analysis of disease data...............................................................................18

List of tables

Table 6.1  Shared SAMRASS Database Tables ................................................................. 19

Table 6.2  Disease Groups ................................................................................................. 20

Table 6.3  Diseases............................................................................................................ 21

6

Glossary of abbreviations and terms

Abbreviations

Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act

COIDA; COID Act

Department of Minerals and Energy

DME

Graphic Mining Solutions International

GMSI

International Classification of Diseases

ICD10

International Labour Office

ILO

Information Technology

IT

Minerals Act

MA

Mine Health and Safety Act

MHSA

Mines Occupational Health Advisory Committee

MOHAC

Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act

ODMWA

Occupational Health Working Party of MOHAC

OHWP

Percentage disability

PD

Employee’s Industry Number, identifying the person for

pension fund and other purposes.

PF Number

Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee

SIMRAC

South African Bureau of Standards

SABS

South African Mines Occupational Diseases Database

SAMODD

South African Mines Reportable Accident Statistics System

SAMRASS

The Employment Bureau of Africa

TEBA

Terminology

Normalisation

A term used in IT: normalisation is a data analysis process intended to enhance clarity,

flexibility, consistency and integrity of a database design. It also embeds business rules

within the database, preventing a significant proportion of common system errors.

Code; Coding

In the IT industry, the term Code is generally used to denote computer programs in the

form of the source code written by programmers, in a language such as F

ORTRAN

 or

C

OBOL

; Coding is the writing of such programs.

Attribute

Attributes are also known as fields or columns in a database table. An “Employee” table

could contain “Surname”, “FirstName” and “IdentityNumber” attributes.

7

Record

An entry in a database table. Also known as a row. An Employee record could contain the

following data: Surname = ”Smith”, FirstName = ”Wilbur” and IdentityNumber =

”7212015108188”.

Table

A term used in the IT industry to describe a collection of related data. The data within a

database table is organised into rows and columns, the rows representing entries in the

table, and the columns representing the attributes of the data.

Reportable

Within the context of this report, an occurrence of an occupational disease is said to be

Reportable if an employer is required by a national law or regulation to report that occur-

rence to the DME for entry into the Occupational Diseases Database.

Compensable

An occurrence of an occupational disease is said to be Compensable if compensation has

been awarded for a permanent disability resulting from that disease occurrence. (The

terms Compensatable and Compensationable are also used.)

8

1 Introduction

Project GEN 505 was commissioned

1

 by SIMRAC to address a lack of information on the

prevalence of occupational diseases in the mining industry. This lack has frustrated

desires to tackle causes of such occupational diseases in a coordinated, effective manner,

as the data required to analyse occurrence trends has been lacking.

This is not to suggest that the industry has made no effort to combat environmental

hazards; on the contrary, in many quarters, extensive monitoring and control measures

are in place, and have been for many years. It is with a view to a more efficient and

effective use of resources that the database has been set up, so that problem areas may

be recognised and prioritised, and occupational hygiene issues dealt with to the optimal

benefit of both workers and the industry.

It is believed that this centralised database to record the occurrence of occupational dis-

eases in the mining industry will go a long way towards addressing the need.

2 Sources of information

The focus of the research project was on the needs of the South African mining industry,

so information was gathered from discussions with representatives of Employers, Labour

and Government, rather than from publications.

However, the Gazette made reference to two Acts of Parliament, viz. the Occupational

Diseases in Mines and Works Act, No. 78 of 1973; and the Compensation for Occupa-

tional Injuries and Diseases Act, No. 130 of 1993. The Health Consultants on the team

extracted project (i.e. database) requirements from these Acts.

Although the Minerals Act and the recent Mine Health and Safety Act were not included in

the scope of the gazetted project, the research team made the design sufficiently generic

to ensure that reporting under these Acts could be handled by the database.

SABS 083 (Reg. 4.17.1 of 2

nd

 June 1989) was referred to for details of reporting require-

ments in respect of noise induced hearing loss.

                                               

1

The research project was advertised in Government Gazette No. 18260 of 5

th

September, 1997.

9

Reference was made to the “Report of the Meeting of Experts on Workers’ Health Surveil-

lance”, from the proceedings of the 270

th

 Session of the International Labour Office, 1997,

as well as the ILO Code of Practice entitled “Recording and notification of occupational

accidents and diseases”. Although the team took cognisance of these publications,

especially when defining terms, strict compliance was not deemed mandatory, as the

project scope is limited to South African conditions.

3 Research methodology

The research methodology adopted to design the occupational diseases database system

was as follows.

3.1 Initial research

As the research team included two Health Consultants, representing not only the specific

interests of employers and labour, but also of the industry generally, through their

connections with MOHAC and SIMRAC, much of the required information was obtained

from them. This information included the following—

•

 Detailed technical data on occupational diseases;

•

 National and international trends and legislation;

•

 Procedural issues related to reporting of occupational diseases;

•

 Requirements of the larger mining houses; and

•

 Requirements from a labour perspective.

3.2 Preliminary design

From this information, a preliminary conceptual design was produced. This showed—

•

 Existing information flow, in the reporting of Reportable and Compensable

Diseases;

•

 Expected data sources for the proposed occupational diseases database;

•

 Attributes

2

 required in an occupational disease record in the database;

•

 Conceptual input screens for the different classes of occupational disease (Noise

induced hearing loss, Cardio-respiratory tuberculosis, etc.); and

•

 An overview of how, and for what purposes, the database is likely to be used for

analysing occupational disease data.

3.3 Workshops

Workshops were held with interested parties, both during and after this preliminary design

phase, to review the design and to gather further relevant information. The interested

10

parties included representatives of the State (the Department of Minerals and Energy,

DME), organised labour, major mining houses and smaller mining concerns. A

presentation was also made to the Occupational Health Working Party (OHWP) of

MOHAC.

A meeting was held with the GEN 509 research team (Dr Murray and Dr Hnizdo, of the

Department of Health), to discuss the viability of linking the SAMODD database with the

Autopsy (PATHAUT) database, which contains respiratory disease records. It was

mutually agreed that, if it was desired to transfer data from the PATHAUT database to the

SAMODD database, then for the foreseeable future, it would be most practical to use a

paper-based system, where data would be printed out from the PATHAUT database and

entered manually into the SAMODD database. Factors which led to this decision were: the

relatively small amount of data involved; the different architectures on which the two

systems were based; the physical separation between the systems; and the risk of

duplicating data which had already been submitted by the mines. (The GEN 509 Final

Report may also be referred to in this connection.) There will also be a need for checking

the congruency of the data in the two databases; this can be satisfied by printing out

selected records from SAMODD, for manual comparison with PATHAUT.

3.4 Formal design

A formal design document was produced by the research team, and presented to the

DME, and to MOHAC. A MOHAC committee approved this design in a meeting at the

Mineralia Building in Braamfontein, on 6

th

 July, 1998.

3.5 Programming

The original contract had provided for the Research Agency, GMSI, to do the develop-

ment of the database and related software, but the IT Section of the DME found that this

would conflict with standard practice within the Department. The intention of GMSI had

been to do the development using Microsoft’s Visual Basic language, with a Microsoft

SQL-Server database; the Department, however, has standardised on the BTrieve

database and the Magic development environment. It was agreed, therefore, that the

design produced by GMSI would be implemented by the Department’s IT Section.

3.6 Case studies

The DME’s IT Section produced a working prototype of the system, and the DME tested

this, using data supplied by members of the MOHAC committee. The Research Agency

provided a consulting and quality control service during the development and testing

                                                                                                                                             

2

See the Glossary.

11

phases. Further discussion is included in the paragraph: Testing of Prototype System, on

page 24.

3.7 Presentation to MOHAC

A working version of the system was demonstrated to MOHAC in the GMSI boardroom on

5

th

 October, 1998. Generally, the system was well received, and the consensus was that

the DME and the industry should go ahead with the implementation of the system.

MOHAC would consider certain details of implementation, which should perhaps include a

phased approach, both as to the number of mines involved, and the level of data required.

There is currently little or no legal requirement – or definition – with regard to reportable

diseases, so perhaps the first year or so could see only compensable diseases being

recorded.

A draft implementation plan was presented by the DME, and this is summarised and dis-

cussed in the following paragraph (3.8). The DME’s presentation looked forward to the

development of an Occupational Hygiene Database System at some stage, to be

integrated with the Occupational Diseases Database System. There was also a mention

of the possibility of using the Department’s home page on the Internet for the dissemina-

tion of statistical data, as well as helpful information and input forms.

The question of compliance with international practices was raised at this meeting,

particularly with regard to “denominator” data. It was suggested that either shifts worked,

or hours worked, should be included in the database, so that South African occupational

disease statistics may be compared with those of other countries. It is the view of the

Research Agency that whilst these statistics are useful, such requirements are outside the

scope of the current research project, whose scope was specifically limited in the Govern-

ment Gazette to be “South African focused.” These requirements should therefore be con-

sidered in the appropriate committee, and put forward as a change to the system.

Another issue that was raised, was that of confidentiality of personal data. This is

discussed in the paragraph: Testing of Prototype System, on page 24.