SUMMARY

and intense physical work are the characteristic hallmarks of mining work. Objectives: To determine the prevalence and pre-disposing factors for Low Back Pain (LBP) among male underground gold miners at the Obuasi gold mine in Ghana. Methods: This is a cross sectional study on 280 male underground gold miners from June to Octo-ber 2001 with a structured questionnaire adminis-tered through interviews. Results: The twelve months prevalence of low back pain among miners was 67%. The mean age of the workers was 40 years ( ± 5.6, ranging from 27 to 53 years). Increasing age was significantly associated with low back pain, (P=0.05) OR 2.07 (95 % CI 0.99 to 4.34) after adjustment for smok-ing and occupation. Prevalence of LBP was high-est among workers performing engineering (82%) duties. Heavy physical work (77%), was identified as a major cause of LBP, which could be pre-vented by the use of lifting aids (16%). Conclusion: The prevalence of low back pain in this group is comparable with that obtained from other studies in Africa and Europe. Training and education as a means of reducing LBP was sug-gested by just a few of the respondents