Tang Dan, the director of Guangdong Provincial Work Injury Rehabilitation Center, disclosed to local media at a recent meeting that Guangdong has provided vocational rehabilitation services to more than 4,000 employees suffering from work injuries and helped 78% of them return to work.
As one of China's labor intensive regions, Guangdong sees more work injuries each year. Statistics for 2007 show that 20.35 million people in the province lived on work injury insurance, of which 13 million were migrant workers. In recent years, an average of 150,000 workers have suffered from work injuries each year and 80% of these are reported to be migrant workers.
Tang said that there are still big gaps between China and the developed countries on work injury rehabilitation. Tang stated that only 78% of patients of GDWIRC are able to go back to work after the rehabilitation while the percentage in the developed countries is generally over 90%.
It is understood that work injury rehabilitation service consists of medical recovery, vocational rehabilitation and social rehabilitation. Currently, work injury rehabilitation mainly focuses on medical recovery and there's still a dearth of vocational rehabilitation and social rehabilitation in China.
Located in the picturesque Chonghua Hotspring Travel Area, GDWIRC is the only professional work injury rehabilitation organization in Guangdong. It has a vocational and social rehabilitation department, simulated workstations, work training rooms, and social rehabilitation and counseling rooms.