Short abstract:

The worker health system in Pakistan bases itself on the quantification and monitoring of accidents, injuries, disabilities. This paper sees how different injuries are included within worker health data and how it determines how care will be provided, leaves given, fitness for future work determined and compensation provided.

Long abstract:

The worker health system in Pakistan bases itself on the quantification and monitoring of accidents, injuries, disabilities as well as financial contributions from industrial owners that run the healthcare system. Health data and data management systems have played a unique role in linking the industrial system to the medical wellbeing of its workers. As a worker is injured at work, records of the workers monthly contribution from the industry determine if they will receive care. Further, differences in how visible and invisible injuries are quantified lay bare who gets to be counted and hence compensated. How different injuries are included within data determines how care will be provided, leaves given, fitness for future work determined and compensation provided. Data in the worker health system also sets medical precedence for compensation in legal cases fought between workers and their employing industries. Taking cue from the intertwining of data and bodies, this paper explains how technological systems of quantification count bodily injuries and what work they do to provide access to care, survey worker health, and compensate injuries. Through a lens of governance and social studies of health, this paper shows how technological data management, categorizations of workers, and worker health are formed together over time. Therefore this paper asks: what work does data do to align industrial and medical systems, how data reveals and obscurs material conditions of disablement and what is disability in relation to different injuries and bodily conditions within health data?