Common Health Related Problems in Female Constables in Mumbai, India

Abstract

Job of a female constable is very demanding physically as well as mentally as it ranges from desk job to daily proactive patrol activities and specific criminal activities. Apart from the hectic job, being a woman, mother, wife, daughter, they have additional responsibility towards their homes. Most of the times they neglect their pain, tiredness, sufferings because they have no time left for themselves. And in-spite of these conditions, they continue to work for their family as well as for the department. This may in-turn reduce their quality of the work. This study highlights the occupational health and safety risk that female constables may encounter on daily basis. A crossâ€sectional questionnaire survey comprising 100 female police constables from a police station of Mumbai was carried out. It was observed that most of the female constables fall in the age group of 20-40yrs and 44 % were married. 55 % of them thought that they do not get proper time to have their food and had irregular eating habits. 56 % of them had never got their medical check-up done. Knee pain (20%) and lower back pain (20%) were the most common musculoskeletal joint problems, followed by shoulder pain (12%), neck pain (10%) and ankle and foot pain (10%). Only 10% of constables had no complaint of joint. Urinary tract infection (33%), menstrual cycle dysfunction (38%) and skin problems were also common. Hectic job schedules with no breaks, frequent night duties, compounded with the additional household chores left 57% of the subjects who felt that they had no time to rest or socialize and makes them vulnerable to stress (moderate levels 56% and severe 18%). 36% of subjects stated that their job stressful was and they were unable to cope up with it. This study concluded that female constables are at suffering from occupational problems and remedial measures are required to control them such as reform of organizational culture and reduction of their workload so that it should not impinge upon their home lives.