DR TIM CARTER VISITS FORWARD SEAFARERS UNION - SEAFARER HEALTH ANDWELFARE Tim Carter the past president of the International Maritime Health Association(IMHA) and chief Medical Adviser to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in Britainmet officials of the union and press representatives today. He is visiting Mumbai todiscuss developments in seafarer medical fitness assessment with the maritimesector and to help organize the programme for the 10
th
International Symposium onMaritime Health to be held in Goa this September.In his presentation he indicated that it was now essential to base decisions aboutseafarers’ fitness to work on the best available evidence on risk rather than just onthe medical opinions of the examining doctor. To be fair to seafarers and toemployers the reasons for fitness decisions needed to be clearly identified inadvance. Standards should aim to ensure that health problems arising at sea do notendanger other seafarers, the vessel or the individual’s own prospects of safe andcomplete recovery. Tim noted that, while everyone wanted seafarers to be healthy, the seafarersthemselves did not want to be denied work unless there was a well defined reasonfor it. By contrast ship operators were primarily concerned to have their vesselsoperating efficiently and economically and as a result could all too easily decide tonot engage anyone with any form of ill-health even if it was irrelevant to work atsea. At times unscrupulous medical examiners could conspire with this approach inreturn for the business operators provided them with.Such problems may be solved by having a fair and transparent system of medicalfitness assessment that is regulated and audited by the national maritime authority.Indeed this responsibility is being increasingly placed on authorities by theconventions from international agencies such as IMO and ILO. Tim related his experience in revising and managing the medical standards systemin Britain and also described the work he is doing with IMHA to assist IMO and ILO todevelop a fair and consistent set of international standards.Union officials presented several case histories of seafarers who had beenunreasonably discriminated against because of health problems. Tim endorsed theapproaches that they were taking both to these cases and to wider programmes toimprove the health and welfare of Indian seafarers both on Indian flagged andforeign ships.10 January 2009
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