Family Health Strategy and occupational injuries notification, Brazil, 2007-2011

Objective: to describe the trend of non-fatal occupational injury notification on the Notifiable Diseases Information System (Sinan), in Brazil, from 2007 through 2011, and to verify whether the Family Health Strategy (ESF) has had an impact on notification. Methods: this is an ecological study taking the Brazilian municipalities as its units of analysis. Data was obtained from the Notifiable Diseases Information System (Sinan) and from the Health Ministry's General Coordination of Workers' Health and Department of Primary Health Care. Multiple linear regression was used. Results: in 2007, only 5.4% of municipalities notified occupational injury, although notification is increasing and reached 28.3% in 2011. No statistically significant association between ESF coverage and occupational injury notification was found during the study period. Conclusion: the number of municipalities notifying occupational injury is growing but apparently the Family Health Strategy has not contributed to this increase, suggesting that the engagement of primary health care in workers' health needs to be improved.