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The trade in high-quality surgical instruments may be exploiting workers in the developing world, says a new report. Children as young as seven are working to make scalpels, scissors and other items, in sometimes unhealthy and dangerous conditions.
The problem is probably compounded by the low wages paid to workers in Pakistan, which produces around 20% of the world's surgical instruments, says Mahmood Bhutta, a London-based surgeon who investigated working conditions while on a trip to Sialkot, the Pakistani centre for the industry.
Shoppers are used to demanding that products such as coffee and bananas are fairly traded, says Bhutta. But healthcare institutions in the developed world should also be striving to ensure that the products they buy do not exploit poor workers. Some 50,000 people are involved in making stainless-steel surgical tools in Sialkot; around 7,700 of them are children, Bhutta reports in the British Medical Journal. Most start at the age of nine, although some as young as seven work in Sialkot's many small workshops.
Although complex, expensive instruments such as endoscopes are chiefly made in Germany, many simple metal implements are made by skilled Pakistani workers, who have inherited a tradition of metalworking that extends back to seventeenth-century swordsmiths. "A pair of scissors that is finely crafted and machined can be made by manual labour by someone who is appropriately trained," Bhutta says.
But although the world trade in handheld surgical tools is worth at least $US650 million every year, poor workers do not see much of the money. A pair of scissors might retail for $80, but the German companies that market them typically pay the manufacturer around $1.25. A Pakistani study in 2003 found that half of children making surgical instruments reported injuries at work, with 95% suffering sleep problems and 80% enduring back, neck or shoulder pain, as well as eye and lung problems. This probably stems from the use of grinding, milling and corrosive chemicals, and the high levels of dust and noise in workshops.
Source: Nature
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