What’s on the agenda at this year’s International Labour Conference?

Dimitrina Dimitrova

Dimitrina Dimitrova
is the Deputy Director of the ILO’s Official Meetings Department

The 106th Session of the International Labour Conference gets under way in Geneva, Switzerland from June 5-16. Here’s a look at the main issues that will be discussed by government, employer and worker delegates from the ILO’s 187 member states.

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Healthcare workers care for us, but who’s caring for them?

Wu Rulian, HIV-OSH, ILO Country Office for China and Mongolia

Wu Rulian, HIV-OSH, ILO Country Office for China and Mongolia

In 2014, during a routine surgery on a patient with liver cancer at a provincial Chinese hospital, Dr. Xu Jun, 35, accidently cut himself with a scalpel.

He got worried.  What if he got infected by HIV or hepatitis? He waited for months for a diagnosis, fearing the potential impact of illness on his job and ability to care for his three-year old son. One of his colleagues had previously lost her job after getting infected with HIV.

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What can the fight against HIV teach us about Ebola?

Margherita Licata and Kofi Amekudzi

Margherita Licata and Kofi Amekudzi, Technical Specialists ILOAIDS

The more we learn about the challenges of responding to the Ebola Virus Disease  in West Africa, the easier it becomes to discern parallels to the HIV epidemic —  another health crisis , which we’ve been battling for over 30 years now. The HIV response has some valuable lessons for the way we confront the disease in general, particularly in the workplace. Here’s an example.

About four years ago, we were working in southern Malawi with the ILO Programme for HIV/AIDS on a project targeting workers at the Lujeri Tea Estate. Though the rate of new infections has slowed, Malawi still has some of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, affecting one in every four people who lives there.

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