Improving injury surveillance on Victorian farms

Those living and working on farms are vulnerable to injury and even death due to hazards such as animals, machinery, vehicles, tripping hazards, working from heights, and working in enclosed areas such as silos. The Victorian agricultural industry has a high rate of fatalities compared to other industries. According to SafeWork Australia1 there were 37 fatalities on Victorian farms in 2023, which represents a fatality rate of 1.0 per 100,000 agricultural workers. This compares to a fatality rate of 1.4/100,000 agricultural workers in New South Wales and 1.8/100,000 workers in Queensland for the same period. Looking at trends from 2003 to 2023, Victorian agricultural workers accounted for 19% of all fatalities across industries, compared to fatalities among road transport workers (18%) and construction workers (10%).
Surveillance of farm injuries in Victoria is currently made possible via hospital data collected by the Victorian Department of Health, which is analysed by the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU). Visits to emergency departments are recorded in the Victorian Emergence Minimum Data Set (VEMD), which comprises de-identified clinical information on presentations at 40 Victorian public hospitals with a designated 24-hour emergency department. Mandatory injury surveillance items are reported in the VEMD, including activity when injured, body region of injury, human intent, injury cause, nature of the main injury and place where the injury occurred. VEMD data has been collected since the early 2000s, which allows for trends over time to be examined. An important variable in the VEMD is the text description of the injury, which can provide additional information about the circumstances of farm injuries, for example types of vehicles and machinery involved, and specific information about the causes of injuries. As many farms in Victoria are not covered by workers compensation insurance, information in the VEMD is vital for gaining a thorough understanding of farm-related injuries that may not be found within the workers compensation data bases.