Work related injuries in Qatar: a framework for prevention and control

Abstract

Work related injuries (WRIs) are a growing public health concern that remains under-recognized, inadequately addressed and largely unmeasured in low and middle-income countries (LMIC’s). However, even in high-income countries, such as those in Gulf Cooperating Council (GCC) like Qatar, there are challenges in assuring the health and safety of its labor population. Countries in the GCC have been rapidly developing as a result of the economic boom from the petrochemical industry during the early seventies. Economic prosperity has propelled the migration of workers from less developed countries to make up for the human resource deficiency to develop its infrastructure, service and hospitality industries. Although these countries have gradually made huge gains in health, economy and human development index, including improvements in life expectancy, education, and standard of living, there remains a high incidence of work-related injuries especially in jobs in the construction and petrochemical sector. Currently, there is scarcity of literature on work-related injuries, especially empirical studies documenting the burden, characteristics and risk factors of work injuries and the work injured population, which includes large numbers of migrant workers in many GCC countries. This paper will focus on the current understanding of WRIs in those countries and identify the gaps in current approaches to workplace injury prevention, outlining current status of WRI prevention efforts in Qatar, and propose a framework of concerted action by multi-sectoral engagement.

Occupational Safety and Work-Related Injury Control Efforts in Qatar: Lessons Learned from a Rapidly Developing Economy

“…To date, WRIs have been highlighted as an industrial safety and human rights issue. As described in our earlier publication [ 22 ], efforts directed towards applying a public health approach to WRIs that integrates policy, oversight and research to inform practice, interventions and training will ensure long-term injury control and the physical and mental wellbeing of workers from all backgrounds, industries and occupations ( Figure 1 ). Hazard mitigation, near-miss incident analysis, and events reports must be used to improve occupational safety standards.…”

“…WRIs resulting in death or permanent disabilities are also liable for compensation, with certain exemptions (e.g., proven self-harm, and use of drugs or alcohol). Additionally, there is a need to improve workers’ access to and knowledge of policies, procedures and public documents produced by relevant ministries, as well as interpretation and translation services, considering the multilingual nature of the workforce in Qatar [ 3 , 22 ].…”

Occupational Accidents Assessment by Field of Activity and Investigation Model for Prevention and Control

“…The category "25 to 54 years" has the most accidents, being followed by the "55 years or over" category. According to [17][18][19][20][21][22][23], most injured workers and workers fell in the category from 25 to 54 years. This fact was also confirmed in Romania [28].…”

“…In 2000, the Lisbon European Council developed the "Creating more and better jobs" strategy and four basic indicators were used. Statistical data refers to non-fatal and fatal accidents at work in the European Union (EU) and in Romania; the data series in the statistics used were obtained from the National Institute of Statistics of Romania (NIS), Labor Inspection from Romania, and Eurostatof the European Commission [17][18][19][20]. The data in these series were declared accidents within the enterprise.…”

“…In order to develop a strategic model for the prevention and control of work accidents, a number of existing models in specialized literature have been evaluated [17][18][19][20][21]. The first model underlining that the group of young people in Canada aged 15-24 was at a higher risk of traumatic occupational injury and a PICO framework (population, intervention, comparison, and outcome) had been developed.…”