English version - Fit for Work Europe

MSDs and government
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4.2
MSDs:
Policy
However, direct medical costs represent only a smaller portion of the total burden of the
disease. Further societal burden is associated with the indirect cost of lost productivity resulting
from ill-health. Although few surveys have considered the indirect societal costs of MSDs in
Japan, a recent study estimates the indirect economic burden of disease in Japan (excluding
medical costs) to be JPY 3.3 trillion a year, highlighting chronic pain (including neck, shoulder,
back and joint pain) as a major contributor to that burden at JPY 372 billion per year (ACCJ,
2011a).
On the example of RA, Igarashi, Igarashi, Kikuta, Tanaka, Hoshi, Inoue et al. (2010) find that
societal costs of disease increase progressively with worsening RA: 2,896,248 for those with
higher score of disease severity EQ-5D score (>0.8) and 1,329,398 for those with the lower
score (