Tackling injustices of occupational lung disease acquired in South African mines: recent developments and ongoing challenges

Table 2 Number of compensable occupational lung disease related claims for countries in Southern Africa, 1973–2017

Country	Miners^a N (% of total)	Compensable claims^b N^c (% of total)	Rate of claims by country^d %	Expected claims: Method 1^d N (Difference)	Expected claims: Method 2^e N (Difference^f)
South Africa	1,189,515 (73.3)	159,858 (73.2)	13.4	402,687 (242,829)	237,573 (77,715)
Lesotho	191,225 (18.8)	38,192 (17.5)	20.0	64,735 (26,543)	38,192 (0)
Mozambique	152,091 (9.4)	11,496 (5.3)	7.6	51,487 (39,991)	30,376 (18,880)
Swaziland	31,958 (2.0)	3402 (1.6)	10.6	10,819 (7417)	6383 (2981)
Botswana	29,224 (1.8)	4325 (2.0)	14.8	9893 (5568)	5837 (1512)
Malawi	29,741 (1.8)	1028 (0.5)	3.5	10,068 (9040)	5940 (4912)
Total	1,623,754	218,301	13.4	549,689 (331,388)	324,301 (106,000)

^aFrom Ehrlich et al. (2018) [13]. Only includes total number of miners from 1973 to 2013. The estimated present average age of miners in the TEBA database (54 years) matched well with the age of miners in the selected studies (51.5 years); we concluded that the TEBA database would provide adequate denominator data for rough estimation
^bIncludes both paid and unpaid compensable claims
^c84,596 claims that are missing the country of origin on file have been allocated in proportion with the claims that do have a country listed
^dTotal is 33.9% of the total miners for the country, a target proportion established by aggregate analysis (see Table 1)
^eTotal is 20.0% of the total miners for the country, a target proportion set by Lesotho. Difference subtracts the actual compensable claims made from the total
^fDifference subtracts the actual compensable claims made from the expected total

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