According to the United Nations Global Compact, 2.78 million employees die from work related accidents and diseases annually. Apart from this, non-fatal accidents related to the workplace affect 374 million employees every year. A distressing 7500 deaths occur globally every day among employees and these can be attributed to unhealthy and unsafe workplace conditions.
But it is not just accidents and unsafe work environments that can take a toll on employees. Often, an employee’s health can be affected by other factors, such as biological/chemical hazards, physical hazards, and ergonomic conditions that result in long-term health problems. Moreover, an employee may have certain medical conditions that prevent them from giving their best. All of these can result in a loss to the employee as well as the employer, which is why managing health and safety for employee should be a priority for any employer.
What is health and safety for employees?
Every employer has the responsibility to provide a safe and healthy working environment to their workforce. Basic hygiene and safety measures must be taken care of. In addition, the employer must also ensure that the working conditions are such that the employees are not at risk of developing any lifestyle diseases simply owing to their work environment.
The importance of safety and health at work becomes evident when we see what kinds of lifestyle diseases can be caused by poor working conditions:
• Studies show that diseases like cancer, liver disease, Alzheimer’s, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, stroke, hypertension and others can be traced back to workplace conditions.
• Work environments with much noise, dust, smoke, or pollutants can cause severe health issues including respiratory problems.
• Working in cramped conditions or lack of ergonomic sitting, standing or working conditions can lead to musculoskeletal damage.
All of these make it critical for employers to prioritise safety and health at work by making periodic medical checks for the workforce available, so that they can track their health status and identify risk areas in advance.
How do employee health and safety measures help employers?
Why is health important to us personally? Good health allows us to give our best in any situation, take up challenges and exert ourselves to the maximum. The collective good health of a workforce can deliver similar benefits to an organisation.
• A healthy employee is an asset to any organisation. Poor health forces an employee to take many leaves of absence, disrupting the work. This is neither good for the employee nor the company, which finds its smooth workflow interrupted multiple times.
• Ensuring that the workplace is conducive to the employee’s good health is equally important to ensure the company upholds its reputation in the marketplace. This is one of the reasons why safety is important, to enable continuous and seamless work.
• Healthy employees are productive employees too, who can rise to challenges quickly and more effectively. Which is why, no company would wish to undermine its productivity by ignoring employee health and safety measures. .
• Another reason why safety is important in the workplace is because when workplace accidents occur, there is a need for investigation and downtime until the root cause is discovered. This negatively impacts the finances of a company.
• Managing health and safety for employees means that employees will be able to work at peak efficiency, and with necessary focus. This ensures that the work happens with accuracy and there is little need for correction or rework.
• When the workforce knows that the employer cares about their health and safety, the morale is better, and fewer people tend to quit or look for jobs elsewhere. If a company can build its reputation for offering a good workplace, the most skilled and qualified people will prefer to work there.
Managing health and safety for employees efficiently
A simple way to keep the workforce healthy is to introduce a system of periodic health checks for all. A critical component of employee health and safety measures, annual health monitoring programs are a very popular way for employers to:
• Show their employees they care about their wellbeing
• Keep track of employee health status
• Identify health risks faced by individual employees before they affect work quality
• Pinpoint and plug areas where the work environment is not healthy
• Ensure that the workforce is at peak efficiency, capable of taking the company to new heights
• Improve employee confidence and trust in the employer by demonstrating that the workforce and its wellbeing matters
In many companies, health checks and medical treatment packages are offered as a perk of the job. These are deemed to be a significant benefit to the employee and clubbed with the salary to show the net cost to company of retaining the individual.
Managing health and safety for employee is not just in the best interest of the individual working for a firm, but also for the firm itself. Human resource is a definite asset to any company but only if the workforce has the ability to give its best. By taking care of safety and health at work, an employer can ensure that the workforce is fully equipped to give its best in terms of productivity. And this can be done simply by incorporating a regular health check-up program for employees from a reliable, experienced medical service provider.

It is easy to ignore the possibility of an illness when you are apparently healthy or keeping well seemingly. Moreover, you probably don’t want to worry about ailments unless you experience a symptom that you cannot ignore. It is natural to feel that way. However, given how easily different diseases and conditions are affecting people of all ages these days, going for regular health screening and being cautious is advisable. After all, prevention is better than cure.

Now, screening tests are often deemed concerning and you might be afraid of what the results might show. But that is not a good enough reason to avoid them. Remember that there are many advantages of health screening and they can give you an early warning about potential health issues. For example, studies show that breast cancer screening through mammography offers an impressive 41% reduction in women’s mortality in the following 10 years. We don’t need to tell you how helpful that is, right?

Also, the best part about health screening is that it allows early treatment, which reduces the possibility of a disease aggravating. To know more about the importance of screening test for our health, read on.

What is health screening?

Let’s start with the basics. Exactly what is health screening and when does the physician recommend it? A screening test is a kind of test done before you show any symptoms of a disease. It is conducted with the goal of detecting possible ailments or to find out if you are at risk of a certain disease.

Health screening tests are not a diagnostic tool to be exact, but they are used extensively by physicians to determine if you should be undergoing more specific tests to check if you have a particular ailment or if you are at a higher risk of contracting it.

It also makes sense to go for health screening tests at periodic intervals because the chance of being at risk of a certain disease despite screening is a small one. In other words, health screening protects you against potential risks that may otherwise lead to complications.

The importance of screening test for your health is greater when:

• You have a family history of specific medical conditions
• You cross a certain age
• Your lifestyle increases your health risks
• You have a medical history that increases your risk of getting specific diseases

Types of screening tests

If you have never been asked to go for a health screening test, you may not be aware of what they are generally like. There are many types of screening tests, and each one may need to be done with its own distinctive periodicity. Some types of screening tests, such as breast cancer screening, might be recommended after a certain age, for instance.

Even a physical exam by your doctor is a simple screening test example. The most common screening tests recommended by doctors are for:

• Diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Excess cholesterol
• Breast cancer in women
• Colorectal cancer
• Cervical cancer in women
• Obesity
• Lung health
• Liver health
• Kidney health
• Prostate cancer in men
• Osteoporosis

10 reasons why health screening is important

There are several reasons that help establish the importance of health screening. In general, the following are the most significant among the benefits of screening tests because they act as a guide for treatment.

1. Identifies underlying issues: One of the main advantages of health screening is that it allows you to spot when there is an underlying problem, one that has not yet manifested itself in the form of symptoms. There may be situations where you feel perfectly healthy and have not been experiencing any changes, but there may be something wrong with your physiology at a very deep level. You probably haven’t realized it or felt it yet. Hence, the importance of screening test lies in its ability to pinpoint such ‘invisible’ health issues.
2. Helps in early detection: Among the main benefits of screening tests is their usefulness in detecting certain conditions at early stages. When a condition is detected early, treatment can be started early too. This results in better, more positive outcomes, improving your chances of a full and quick recovery. Remember that early detection plays a significant role in reducing mortality and morbidity rates, which means that health screening may actually give you a new lease of life with a serious ailment.
3. Relieves anxiety: Especially in case of hereditary diseases that pass on from one generation of the family to the next, you might be highly anxious to know if you have the disease or not. This anxiety itself might lead to a slew of stress-related problems. The importance of screening test in such cases lies in the reassurance it can give you, so that you can stop worrying about a hereditary problem that you are not affected with. Early screening allows you to live a stress-free, healthy life, where you can pursue your dreams to the fullest.
4. Helps avoid unnecessary precautions: Often, you might hear so much about a specific ailment that you might take extra precautions to avert it, even going to the extent of changing your lifestyle or restricting it severely. However, that might not be necessary at all. So, one of the significant benefits of screening tests is that you can eliminate the possibility of such ailments so that you can stop taking unnecessary precautions that curtail your freedom.
5. Puts you in control: It becomes challenging to fight a disease when it has taken a strong hold of your system. Or you might end up needing serious medical intervention. However, when the same disease is detected at a very early stage, thanks to health screening, it enables you to get treatment on time and recover fast. So, in effect, one of the main advantages of health screening is that it gives you better control over your body and health.
6. Allows focus on crucial areas: A screening test throws light on specific health hazards that you are at risk of and it also tells the doctor what areas they need not be worrying about. This narrowing down of the potential risk areas allows the physician to work without distraction and focus where it is needed the most.
7. Catches the signs before complications: When it comes to health and wellbeing, you surely want to avoid emergency situations. And the simplest way to do that is by scheduling regular screening tests as suggested by the doctor. So, if you are wondering “why is health screening important”, one of the main reasons is because it identifies emerging issues on time before they lead to complications requiring emergency treatment.
8. Ensures early intervention and less invasive treatment: While this is not always true for all ailments, it does hold good for most. Be it simple health hazards, say high cholesterol, or more serious problems like colon cancer, early identification means the disease can be managed with simpler, less invasive treatment methods.
9. Helps you to take preventive care: As you age, your body’s defences also begin to break down. This is the reason why it is important to take better care of yourself when you get older. So, why is health screening important in this regard? It helps you to take preventive care and avert the possibility of common but dreaded diseases. For example, if your screening shows that your cholesterol levels are elevated, you can immediately start making changes to your diet and exercise regime, to prevent cardiovascular complications later.
10. Pinpoints ailments that are unexpected: You already know that lung cancer is a significant risk for smokers, but did you know that 10- 15% of non- smokers too suffer from this dreaded disease? What this data indicates is that even when you have no family history and no lifestyle factors contributing to a disease, it may still affect you. And the importance of screening tests lies in their ability to warn you of such diseases that may otherwise blindside you.

To conclude

Being healthy is the key to being happy, and the importance of screening test for our health cannot be emphasised enough. Apart from a number of advantages that it has to offer, as you can see, the importance of screening test lies in the fact that it gives you a stress-free life where you have the freedom to pursue your career and dreams without being bogged down by health concerns. With regular health screening, you can give yourself a better and healthier life.

Did you know that a simple problem like anaemia or iron deficiency can lead to irregular heartbeat, arrhythmia, or even heart failure? Globally, over 2 million people have anaemia and if left undiagnosed and untreated, it can lead to heart issues. Why is this important and how is it linked to a preventive health check-up? The fact is that anaemia is just one of the many risk factors for your health that can be uncovered quickly through a preventive health check-up. These check-ups, when done regularly by qualified, experienced personnel can help you live a healthier, longer, better life.

Be it cancer, heart ailments, mental disorders, or eye-related issues that may lead to blindness, many of these can be averted in time with a comprehensive preventive health check-up plan. Early detection of most diseases reduces their intensity and impact on your life. In short, a preventive health check-up often lays the foundation for a better quality of life and in many cases, gives you a new lease on life.

Why is preventive health check-up important for you?

Below are some of the reasons why you should adopt a preventive health check-up plan:

Make the right lifestyle changes

Preventive health check-up covers several tests that identify the symptoms of future ailments. Many of these indicators can be brought under control with simple lifestyle changes. For example, increasing the intensity of exercise can reduce your risk of heart disease or controlling the amount of sugar in your diet can avert diabetes.

Avoid serious illnesses

Your preventive health check-up helps your physician understand the risk areas to cover and they can give you the right advice to follow, including medications or changes in habits to keep serious ailments away.

Keep treatment costs within reason

When a disease is identified in its early stages, it can be treated with less invasive and less intensive methods. Often, this means you can avoid surgeries or long-term treatment that can be quite expensive.

Improve treatment outcomes

In many cases, early detection helps resolve the disease or manage it better. Even cancers like breast, colorectal or cervical cancer can be treated with greater success when detected early.

Track your health status

With a preventive health check-up, you will be able to know how healthy you are and what aspects of your health require attention. This helps you make healthy choices for your body.

Reduce complications

A preventive health check-up can also monitor your health conditions regularly so that you can quickly address the changes that happen. This helps prevent further complications in existing medical conditions.

Who needs a preventive health check-up?

Even babies undergo preventive tests to eliminate problems. For example, regular eye exams for a baby over the first year of his/her life can identify problems like amblyopia and corrective treatment can be started immediately. However, as an adult, here is what you should know about a regular preventive health check-up:

• People aged between 35-60 are most affected by lifestyle diseases so if you fall within this age group, it is time to schedule annual check-ups
• Men above 35 and women aged above 40 require a yearly preventive health check-up.
• For those with a family history of specific hereditary diseases, a regular preventive health check-up plan is essential.
• For some diseases like cervical cancer, experts recommend early preventive checks at least by the age of 20. The same holds for people with known risk factors for coronary heart disease.

What comes under a preventive health check-up?

A preventive health check-up is a series of medical tests that are done to find out what measures you must take to avert future medical problems. A typical preventive health check-up covers the following:

• Physical exam, including weight checks, height, BMI
• Blood pressure
• Eye exam
• Immunization record and updates
• Lipid profile
• Dental exam
• Cholesterol

In addition, there may be specific tests done depending on your gender, age or known medical conditions. For example, women should include a pelvic exam and pap smear in their annual preventive health check-up. A preventive health check-up for heart, on the other hand, will include a more detailed lipid profile that clearly gives HDL and LDL values, and more.

For older people, the annual preventive health check-up is more comprehensive and may include the following:

• Cancer screening of different types for men and women
• Osteoporosis screening
• Pulmonary profile
• Liver function
• Bone mineral density (women)
• Prostate screening
• Obesity
• Hearing tests
• Mental health evaluations

While this is what comes under a preventive health check-up usually, your regular physician may add more tests based on your health status and existing conditions, if any.

Prepping for your preventive health check-up plan

• Consumption of alcohol should be avoided 24 hours before the screening as it might hamper outcomes.
• If X-rays or scans are part of the preventive health check-up list, then avoid wearing jewellery and check if the use of any lotions, creams, or oils can affect the readings
• If you have trouble breathing or standing or if you have a condition that makes any test difficult or risky, inform the doctor in advance (For example, pregnant women are asked to avoid X-rays)

How to find the right preventive health check-up program?

In today’s fast-paced life, owing to time constraints you do not notice how your body is affected by various factors. According to research, overlooked issues such as stress can have life-threatening consequences.

So, the most important thing is to find a reliable place to get your preventive health check-up plan done accurately, quickly, hygienically and with least discomfort. For the best preventive health check-up in Bangalore, all you have to do is walk into NURA health screening centre for a comprehensive health check that brings the best of AI-enabled imaging to you. With friendly technicians, experts to help you and a patient-first policy, you can seamlessly keep track of your health.