History
The ALSAT (Association Luxembourgeoise de Santé au Travail) was founded in 1996 and is a member of the AMMMD (Association des médecins et médecins dentistes). Occupational health was introduced in 1994 and the occupational health services started their work in January 1995.
By law, every private company has to organize occupational health for all their employees and there are 3 possibilities to fulfill this obligation:
- Have an in-house occupational health service ( possible for companies with more than 3000 workers)
- Create an occupational health service for a sector of activities
- Affiliate to the Service the Santé au Travail Multisectoriel (STM) which is a public occupational health service created by law and financed by the companies, asking for his service
The public sector has a different regulation for occupational health and its own occupational health service .
Organization
Luxembourg has a population of 500 000. The active working population is approximately 320 000 in the private sector and 27 600 in the public sector. The active population is high because of a large part of workers from our neighbor countries.
Actually there are 4 in-house occupational services, 3 sector-organized services and the STM for the private sector and one service for public employees.
The law requires an occupational health physician for 5000 workers. Or actually all the services occupy only 55 occupational health physicians.
Professions
The training for occupational health physicians took place in the Universities of our Neighbor countries mostly in Belgium and Germany.
You have the possibilities to become an occupational health physician specialist (4 years training) or to ask after a specific program requiring 450 hours training over 2 years including at least 2 months of practical training in an occupational health service for an authorization to work as an occupational health physician.
Tasks
- Clinical examinations (pre- employment, risk related health survey, on employers or workers demand, after sickness absence over 6 weeks, employees during pregnancy, for rehabilitation )
- Risk assessment
- Prevention at work
Hot topics
In 2012 the Ministry of Health has initiated an audit of occupational health where the following hot topics were issued
- Lack of occupational health physicians
- Multidisciplinary staff in occupational health
- Mental health issues
- Occupational health in SME’s
- Promotion of collaboration with stakeholders
Association
Association luxembourgeoise de santé au travail a.s.b.l (ALSAT)
President : Marc Jacoby
Vice president : Nicole Majery
Office :
Rue de Vianden, 29
L-2680 Luxembourg