Longer Working Hours Kills According to the WHO

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), long working hours are killing thousands of people a year. In a study conducted along with the International Labor Organization (ILO), at least 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and heart disease due to long hours.

It was found that a professional has a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease after working 55 hours or more a week compared to the regular 35 to 40 hours.

The report also observed that the most affected were people living in South East Asia and the Western Pacific region. The WHO has not conducted a similar study covering the duration of the pandemic, but it believes this trend might worsen due to the current health crisis.

Moreover, the recent spike in remote working and the economic slowdown is highly likely to increase the risks associated with long working hours.

“We have some evidence that shows that when countries go into national lockdown, the number of hours worked increase by about 10%,” said Frank Pega, WHO technical officer.

Researchers identified two primary ways in which longer working hours resulted in a health decline: the first was physiological responses directly related to stress; while the other was an increase in adopting health-harming behaviors like tobacco use, less sleep, and lack of exercise due to long hours.

Approximately 9% of the global population was already experiencing longer working hours prior to the outbreak of the global pandemic.

Source: BBC