In the interest of assuring awareness on the Employees’ Compensation Program (ECP), the Employees’ Compensation Commission (ECC) recently joined the Department of Health (DOH) -Regional Office VI in its massive orientation on preventing and treating tuberculosis in the business communities of Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Guimaras and Negros Occidental.

The ECC presented the benefits which a worker may avail if he or she contracted a work-connected tuberculosis, most especially to those workers involved in close and frequent contact with source of tuberculosis infection by reason of employment like those involved in the medical treatment or nursing of persons suffering from tuberculosis, as a laboratory worker, pathologist or post mortem worker, where occupation involves working with a source of tuberculosis infection.

In 2011, the ECC expanded the conditions for compensability of Tuberculosis to include workers in high risk occupational groups like staff of correctional facilities or jails; workers involved in the collection, handling or disposal of biological wastes; workers who have been clinically diagnosed with Silicosis or those exposed to silica in the course of their employment and workers in workplaces characterized as overcrowded, poorly ventilated and enclosed where there are documented cases of active TB.

“The ECP’s State Insurance Fund (SIF) with a total assets of Php60.82B, as of December 31, 2017, is ready to finance work-related disability which include work-related tuberculosis, but the promotion of prevention is still the best cure to this epidemic. It is our pleasure to join the DOH in this endeavor,” said Executive Director Stella Banawis.

The ECC is an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment that provides benefits, through the ECP, to workers in the private and public sectors in the event of work-connected contingencies.

 

End/ Stephene S. Barredo