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Researchers in Britain are not interested in the problem of back pain,
the nation’s biggest single cause of lost working days, despite the fact
that money is available to study it. The Health and Safety Exeuctive, with
a biomedical research budget of £2 million, said last week that it
had received a fraction of the normal response from scientists to its call
for research proposals on preventing back injury.

‘Back problems are a poor relation,’ said Tim Carter, the HSE’s director
of health policy and medical services. He was speaking after the executive
launched a three-year campaign to reduce musculoskeletal injuries at work.
Back injuries, which result in 52 million lost working days a year, are
a major focus of the campaign. Many are caused by poor lifting techniques
and ill-designed or inadequate equipment.

When it advertised for research proposals on back pain the HSE received
‘far fewer’ than for other areas, said Carter. ‘Normally, we get between
30 and 40 proposals,’ he said. ‘For back pain, we got maybe a dozen.’ Of
those, only two received funding because ‘there were not many novel or original
ideas’ among them.

One of the two funded projects was to study whether nuclear magnetic
resonance imaging could detect vertebral changes in individuals at risk.
The second aimed to identify specific risks in the workplace and ‘design
them out’.

The HSE’s new drive against musculoskeletal disorders aims to educate
employers, workers, doctors and equipment manufacturers. Despite the fact
that most injuries are preventable, the problems are increasingly widespread,
says the executive.

The campaign encourages family doctors to ask about occupational factors
when people visit them complaining of pain. A brief leaflet for doctors
explains the known causes of musculoskeletal disorders. The executive has
also produced leaflets for workers and employers.