[From occupational medicine to community health in French-speaking Africa].

The Laval University has been involved in many French-speaking African countries for teaching and intervention programs in occupational health and safety. In Algeria and Zaire, seminars for public and occupational health physicians have been aimed at allowing participants to gain the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to implement medico-environmental surveillance programs in industry. These teaching programs were presented in a wider perspective of occupational health services. As defined by the International Labor Organisation (ILO), these services should identify occupational risk factors, conceive and implement occupational prevention programs, realize health surveillance activities, monitor health statistics, promote adaptation of work to workers and rehabilitation of disabled workers, realize information and formation programs and, finally, organize first-aid activities. In Zaire, the program was aimed at integrating the occupational health approach in a more global perspective of community health, which means that the participants were able, at the end of the programs, to identify and analyse the main health problems of a given population and to plan, implement, manage and evaluate the health programs required to meet the health needs of the population. Those aspects were considered important, given that 98% of the active manpower in Africa belongs to industrial sectors which are not covered by occupational medicine legislation, that is the agricultural and informal production sectors. These approaches should help reach the World Health Organisation (WHO) goal set for all countries: "Health for all, by the year 2000".