HEALTH AND WELLNESS: IMPACT ON THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES

In our studies and work with several organisations we have identified with the global efforts on the statement that chronic disease and lifestyle-related health issues are on the rise globally, raising potentially disruptive implications for workforce planning and development. In order to effectively plan for sustainable workforces, employers with global reach are now compelled to refine business strategies with employee well-being in mind.

As economy of different countries and organisations are affected by the new global economic hardship, more pressure has been placed on executives and organisations like never before to uphold their organisations through sustainable innovations and strategies. This expectation is worsening the level of health outcomes of organisations through stress, burnouts, sleep deprivation, increased blood pressure, poor heart health, very critical timelines, leading to overwhelming mental and bodily task and overall health risks. These collective health issues, if allowed to prolong will make us all end up with chronic diseases in the long term. Retirement years are becoming characterised with so much illnesses which are outcomes of our behaviour and lifestyles during our active work age.

Smart companies across the world are enacting innovative health and wellness programs to stimulate improved employee health in such critical time as this. Motivated by a desire to positively impact their employees’ health and well-being, as well as driven by defined business goals and redefine their work cultures. 

Achieving business success is not only predicated on entirely business strategies and processes, the health and wellness of the work population cannot also be overemphasised. The question is how integral is a healthy population to our overall business success?

What is healthy population: This is the healthy outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within a group. Though there are existing health plans (health Insurance) in most organisations, but the urgent need to move from focusing on curative healthcare approach within the workplace and moving to preventive health underpinned in health and wellness programs is of urgent importance. The need for organisations to focus on social ecological models within the workplace and consider environmental cues that influence our overall health and wellness has become expedient.

There are two major critical factors that have become key influencers of continuous presence on chronic disease in our workplaces. The two major factors are:

• Dietary pattern or style
• Physical inactivity

Dietary pattern: What we eat becomes who we end up becoming. Our dietary pattern and eating habit has grossly changed in the past two decades and the need to revert the trend has become a global anticipation. Most organisations have common food sources and the need to tie the food types into our wellness and health programs is also of overall importance.

Eating behaviour amongst us has also gone very bad. Binge eating and disordered eating have characterised eating pattern amongst us all and this is fuelling our body sizes and body weight accumulation. It will interest us to know that body weight and body fat composition are pointers to our collective health risks. Psychology of eating states that people eat for different reasons; these talk about hunger, appetite and satiety. We should eat not because we have appetite for food but because we are truly hungry. Eating because we have presence of food all around us is stimulated by appetite and this is one underlying cause of increased body weight.

There is the concept of energy balance which we must all apply in ensuring a healthy life style and body weight. Energy intake over energy expenditure is what energy balance represents. If you must eat much, be sure you have enough physical activities to expend the amount of food taken in. This will keep you healthy.  

Physical inactivity: Physical activity is not same as physical exercise, this is unintentional or unplanned physical activities we get involved in. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines physical activity as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscle and require energy expenditure. Physical inactivity has become a huge confounder of chronic diseases not only among a working population but a collective global concern. As technology improves, mechanization of the workplaces increases and this fuels sedentary lifestyle amongst workers. The guideline for healthy living says, sitting in a position for one hour and above at a single stretch is unsafe and unhealthy to us all. Studies have revealed that sitting time is associated with increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and other disease states.

Most smart organisations in their attempt to improve healthy life style have adopted the policy of having a central printer system which is kept far from everyone’s seat. This means everyone will have to deliberately move from his or her seat to pick documented sent for printing. This means unintentional muscles activity has become part of the workplace engineering processes. This should be encouraged and emulated in workplace health and wellbeing designs.

Lack of physical inactivity has made obesity and overweight become prevalent in workplaces, people are sliding our of healthy body weight range while some are even getting into morbid obesity stage.

What is healthy body weight?

This is calculated using weight in kg divided height in metre square. Below is Body Mass Index (BMI) categories based on increased risk.

< 18 = Underweight

18.5 – 24.9 = Normal Weight

20.5 – 29.9 = Overweight

30 – 34.9 = Class 1 obesity

35 – 39.3 = Class 2 obesity

>40 and above = Class 3 obesity (morbid obesity)

Prevalence of obesity and overweight in adult population globally

Adult men: 34% are overweight and obese

Adult women: 35% are overweight and obese

Adult men in obesity above 30 BMI: 10%

Adult women in obesity above 30 BMI: 14%

We will be leaving this discussion here but if you can follow us in the next edition, we will be looking at sleep, stress and health risks.

You can reach us using ehi@ohsm.com.ng

  

LASSA FEVER IN WEST AFRICA: THE PREVENTIVE HEALTH CONCERNS

When we again look at preventive health contextually, we will rather refer to it as an approach by an individual, a family or a population group in taking proactive actions towards disease prevention. I would want us to take note of the words “Proactive Actions” which clearly tells us, we do not act in the face of the disease or illness but an action taken in advance to forestall possible occurrence of such diseases.

Taking a quick study of the recent outbreak of the dreaded Lassa fever which is a part of the haemorrhagic virus, I realised it has it traces and foot prints on same parts as Ebola virus, running within the four volatile Ebola virus susceptible Nations (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea). I suddenly perceive there are a number of things we might not be getting right here and one of such things is obviously hygiene.

Hygiene is almost like the bedrock of preventive health, most of the common diseases arising in deaths are very preventable through effective and sustainable standard of hygiene. These four countries are characterised with a high level of compromised hygiene standards which suddenly gets better at the outbreak of a viral disease and drops as the disease and scare comes to an end. This totally makes us reactive and being reactive only deals with surface indicators which the root causes are never unveiled and neither are they attended to in right manner.

As a nation and as a population, we must first deal with our commonalities before taking advantage of our peculiarities and this is a workable approach to safe health. Travel Medicine has told us that one of the fastest ways to spread infection across international borders is through travelling. Infections travel with its host looking for other vulnerable people to infect.

I was in all honesty thinking that these countries that have been infected with Lassa fever over and over again should have made it an issue of National priority to create a lasting prevention to Lassa fever virus by collectively creating a joint framework agreement on this issue. According to the WHO, between 300,000 – 500,000 cases of Lassa fever happens in this sub region annually and about 5,000 deaths are recorded, this is 1% case fatality rate (CFR). This is not a good one, the need to stop the outbreak of the virus is important.

Studies have revealed that women who are in their third trimester of pregnancy are at a higher risk with only 1 in 10 fetal survival rate. When this happens, healthcare workers mainly bother to same only one person and that is the pregnant woman and this is most times through abortion. I think this can be prevented. We have it here with us now, but do not forget we also have women who are pregnant in our midst. Recommendations are focused on regular hand washing, keep all foods in rodent-proof containers, keep the home as clean as possible all the time (rats are attracted to dirty and unclean environment). Also keep your windows closed at night, this guides against possible inhalation of very light particles infected by faeces or urine of rodents. This is not the best of times to drink garri soaked in water, most Nigerians love this meal but we must understand our new abnormal situation which is avoidance of soaked garri in water as meal. The virus will not survive in temperature that is up to 55 degree centigrade, this means you can use your garri for Eba (Garri in Hot Water) and also ensure your food is adequately cooked.

 

As we all come together to battle this scare of Lassa fever, we must not forget the fact that all cases end up in hospitals and hospitals are not manned by ghost but healthcare workers who are also as human as we are. The case of the Late Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh and the national sacrifice she made during Ebola outbreak in Nigeria should still be fresh in our minds.

Healthcare workers will surely have secondary contact and this is part of the risks they have in their job, but the need to also know what precautions to take as healthcare workers will not only protect them but also reduce the spread of the virus as well as national incidence statistics. There are already establishment of transmission of the virus through body to body contact or nosocomial routes which can be avoided through barrier nursing methods, VHF isolation prevention and having an effective infection control process guidelines. These may include wearing of protective clothing (PPE) such as masks, gloves, gowns, goggles etc. Other control measures are complete sterilization of equipment, isolation of infected patients from contact with unprotected persons until the disease runs its course. We must not forget that Lassa fever has no vaccine yet through trials are on in this direction. 

Talking about the disease running its cause, it is important to know that the disease lasts for 4 weeks but it has 3 weeks incubation period. In Nigeria as at today, we have 212 suspected cases in 62 Local Government Areas, 63 deaths recorded in 6 months and 17 States out of the 36 States in Nigeria have already recorded the presence of Lassa fever.

What this tells us is that the need to increase awareness and advocacy on the prevalent of this disease is of crucial importance. We cannot sound and resound this enough; we need to take the message to children in schools, to churches and mosques, market places, offices, motor parks and every available public place. We need to create enough information oxygen within this space; the people need to be aware of the role expected of them to play in such a very sensitive time in the life of their nation.

We can only reduce the spread of this virus, reduce the casualty rate if we all can talk about this in all places. There is no need to wait for the next man to be infected; it is a preventive health approach and strategy if you tell the next man how to conduct himself from getting infected by this virus. Tell him all that there is about this disease, you will only be saving yet another life.

I do not like gossip but if we must gossip let it be about Lassa virus, it will be credited on to you as positive gossip in the right direction. Lives are at risk here.

Play your role! 

ehi@ohsm.com.ng

UNDERSTANDING PREVENTIVE HEALTH

As a child growing up in a fairly remote village, I followed my mum a couple of times to the local maternity centre at the delivery of my younger ones for routine child immunization. One thing I noticed which I clearly remember till date is mothers giving their babies Paracetamol syrup prior to their baby’s immunization. I watched with so much curiosity with many questions in my mind but I was too little and naive to voice say these things out yet I lived with them for years.

When I started my career in 1997 in the hospital, I saw it happen again and I asked a Matron colleague of mine who took time to explain to me. It was then I realised, mothers actually give this medication prior to immunization to prevent their babies from having high temperature. I was so amazed when I imagined the level of awareness and poor educational levels of those women I saw in the village. What these mothers were involved in can be relatively seen as a preventive health approach to health (proactively preventing increased body temperature in infants). It simply means taking proactive actions to prevent possible ill health, sickness or disease before it comes.

What those mothers understood even in that poorly informed level is that their babies can avoid the pain of suffering from high body temperature if they are given paracetamol prior to vaccination. My question is why couldn’t the mothers leave the babies to just take the vaccines without necessarily giving them those medications? Even the Mothers need peace of mind. When their children suffer from increased body temperature, the mothers also suffer discomfort.

This was just to build a foundation on what this column will be focused on within the time or period we have at our disposal. Preventive health is indeed the new frontier in healthcare delivery; it is the new world order in both saving healthcare cost and achieving improved healthcare outcomes. We grew up to meet our healthcare professionals enjoying the conventional curative clinical care, the business the health professionals had with patients was just to listen to patients’ complains, examine their physical clinical presentations and either recommend them for further laboratory investigation or outright drug prescription. 

  

In modern day healthcare services, the complexion of healthcare delivery has greatly changed even the treatment pattern. The focus now is overall wellness, wholeness of body, mind and soul. This is where interaction and patient engagement has placed patients at the centre of quality healthcare delivery team. The rule is, we do not want you to be sick before you come to your healthcare professionals, even when you have questions, go to them and seek medical clarifications.

There used to be a level of reserved disposition among practitioners towards patients, but this has long changed because we must talk with our patients, answer their questions and clarify bothering medical issues they may have in their mind.

The role of the healthcare professionals have transcended beyond just caregiving but to health education, health awareness and health promotion. The patient needs to get informed, the patient needs to know what to do to maintain good health, he needs to know the food type suitable to maintaining good health and possible ways to modify life style in the midst of available health risk exposure.

Preventive health has been recommended as the most cost effective form of healthcare delivery. Let’s look at Hepatitis B which is a viral disease that has a violent effect on the liver, you will agree with me that it is easier, safer and most cost effective for us to get an early screening and take the vaccination if we come out negative. The highest cost you may get this screening and the three course vaccination will be between N5, 000.00 – N7, 500.00, but the average cost of having a six-month treatment outside the pre-treatment test falls within the neighbourhood of N500, 000.00 - N750, 000.00. There is no guaranty that the virus will be totally out within this six months, you might need about a year, two years, 6 years or longer therapy to totally get rid of this viral infection.  What this tells us is that the cost of immunising yourself against Hepatitis B virus is just 1% of the cost of having a six-month therapy.

In any balances you may weigh this from; it makes a whole lot of economic sense to embrace Preventive health in our overall quest to maintaining an improved and quality life style. Curative Medicine is still very much in practice and in use but we need to free spaces in our healthcare facilities through Preventive Health approaches to allow those who really need those clinical environments access to curative care as recommended.

Organisations, families, governments and health insurers are financially bleeding in their health funds because of the sole reason of waiting till we get really sick before we seek medical help. This is wrong; we need to seek Medical help in form of Medical advice even when we are not sick. We need to have thorough engagement will our healthcare providers, if they are not talking to us or providing answers to our questions they cannot be the kind of healthcare providers we really need.  

The most important approach to healthcare delivery in 21^st century is “Caregiver-Patient Engagement”. This has another twist is preventing medical errors and ensuring patients safety.

We will be looking at most of these issues in details as time permits us subsequently. Stay glued to us here, we will surely be back.

I can be reached at ehi@ohsm.com.ng

PROLONGED USE OF HIGH HEELS SHOES COULD CAUSE RESTLESS LEGS SYNDROME (RLS)

There is an issue of recent growing concern to me, most especially in the area of Ergonomics and health risk which is my focus area.

I do not know if you have noticed the indiscriminate use of shoes with incredibly high heels amongst ladies of all ages of late, this has got me really worried on the possible health outcomes. Most alarming is the prolonged use of such high heels shoes in work places ranging from 5 - 8 hours continuous use. This is where the troubles lies.

How many of us have heard of the term RESTLESS LEGS SYNDROME (RLS)? According to a publication of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, "Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological disorder characterized by throbbing, pulling, creeping, or other unpleasant sensations in the legs and an uncontrollable, and sometimes overwhelming, urge to move them". It is classified as a movement disorder, as individuals are forced to move their legs in order to gain relief from symptoms.

Although there are other factors responsible for this disorder but one of the factors indicative of this disorder is the use of high heel shoes predominantly amongst women. Men are all not together left out, studies have also shown that men are also in the habit of wearing shoes with heels such as Sanchos Boots.

I am most worried the way we get our feet traumatised in our quest to be seemingly look fashionable, elegant and perceived glamorous yet in our most discomfort mode. Every part of the body has a scientific process of use and management and you cannot afford to violate these processes without suffering the naturally prescribed consequences which you cannot appeal.

You must have heard of the term Cumulative Trauma Disorder (CTD), this is very applicable to this high heel shoes habit. We either pay now, or we pay later because you have continuously traumatised your feet and this has great consequences which awaits you in future. You may not have an immediate consequence but because this habit persists over a period of time, the possibility of suffering from RLS will be very high. But remember, this has to do with frequency of exposure and duration of exposure to such risk. This talks about how often you get involved in the use of high heels shoes and when you use them, how long do you stay on them (do you use them 5 days in a week and you are on them for 8 hours stretch in each of these days). I would rather think RLS is avoidable if we wear relatively flat shoes or shoes with very low heels more often, especially during work hours or at work.

We have heard of a number of crashes as a result of such high heel shoes in workplaces, it is more frequent when climbing or walking down the stairs. When you look at it closely, it causes organisations downtime through man-hour loss and RLS induced absenteeism, extra health cost and psychological tension amongst colleagues. The person who wears these shoes is not also left out because he or she lives to suffer the immediate pain and the cumulative long term health effect and consequences.

This can also be linked to insomnia. During my online course on Behavioural Medicine at Karonlinska Institutet Sweden, i realised one of the most predominant causes of lose of sleep is pain and this is most times taken out of focus by some Physicians while we continuously overwork ourselves trying to figure out ways of dealing with the lack of sleep without recognising the root cause. When you stay on these high shoes for longer hours, you are bound to go through pain just like an employee who has spent a whole day working in a workplace that is ergonomically dysfunctional. This continuous body pain in affected locations may not allow you have a good night rest because of pain and discomfort, you wake up in the morning feeling more tired than you were before you went to bed. Most times, even feel too tired to go to work and even when you manage to go, the law of circadian rhythm sets in. Because you had sleep disruption, you are at work and yet battling with heavy eyes and urge to sleep. This in turn does not allow an employee to be optimally productive and again leads to presenteeism (you are present at work just to be seen but in the real sense, you are productively absent).

This has a huge adverse effect on both the employee and the employer alike. The employer is not earning the expected production contribution of the employee and the employee when appraised also will not like the outcome of the appraisal and could jeopardise the position of the employee's continuity in the organisation.  

In as much as we love the fashionable and elegant look you seem to portray from the use of these sets of high heel shoes, we are more concerned about your feelings and look in your old-age. That is what sustainability is all about, so long as the high heels shoes and the fashionable look it gives to you cannot be sustained till old-age, then it is unhealthy and unsafe and not worth continuing with. Your feet should be able to function well all through your days at least, without necessarily going through pressures which we are imposing on them today.

It does not matter how long this has gone on, when we make a deliberate and honest decision to discontinue in this act or habit, restoration sets it and you will begin to have your legs back. I think it is worth giving a shot.

This is just a concern expressed in my own honest understanding but i hope it helps all the same. No harm intended at all.

I can reached at ehi@ohsm.com.ng

QATAR 2022: AS THE WORLD PLAYS FOOTBALL IN MIGRANT WORKERS’ BLOOD STAINED STADIA

I am a member of International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH); I was at the 31^st ICOH Congress 2015 held May 31 – June 5, 2015 in Seoul South Korea. I sat in ICOH General Assembly on 5^th June 2015 when a colleague raised a question on the increasing rate of migrant workers death in Qatar because of the quest to impress the world in 2022 FIFA World cup. I tried to listen to the response of ICOH and its position on this issue but I got worried the more I listened. In my mind, I concluded this as a case no one can look into while the death toll even increases in the days and years ahead. This prompted me to look for reports on this issue and the level of the work done so far in this direction. I became more worried the more lines I read.

Amongst all the reports, I asked myself where is ILO? Where is WHO? and where are the Human Right Lawyers? I felt a bit of Amnesty International’s presence and I was wondering why everyone is quiet over these sad occurrences, we watch healthy young men slaughtered at workplaces in an attempt to earn an honest and legitimate means of livelihood and the whole world is quiet? If the right to safe and healthy workplace is a human right as collectively agreed in one of the global declarations, then we have all failed these murdered migrant workers by such a collective global silence. No life should be lost because the world wants to watch football matches, the football pitches are all stained with innocent migrant workers blood, when we all sit down on those stadia upon completion what do we really see? You may see beautiful matches played but most of us will not see those matches but stains of blood because that is what the stadia in Qatar and the adjoining structures will remind us of.

I got sad when I read the report that after five years of securing the bid to host the World Cup, Qatar’s government is just issuing a statement that significant progress was being made to improve lives and labour conditions of guest workers in Qatar. Who is going to speak for these workers who have got no voice because they have been banned from union representation, who is going to speak for them when the home government in Nepal have issued a careless statement that the migrant workers suffer stroke because they are adjusting to air conditioning systems. The government of Nepal’s interest and concern is only the remittances repatriated home by these people, this forms almost 30% of Nepal’s GDP. Is this enough for any responsible government to maintain silence and watch her people die in foreign workplaces? “Your life becomes wrecked when those who would have spoken in your defense turn their back against you to share Champagne with your adversaries”. This is sad and this describes the helpless case of Nepalese.

Qatar was once one of the poorest Gulf States, now one of the richest countries in the region as a result of the exploration of large oil and gas fields since the 1940s. It has more than 15% of world’s proven gas reserve. It got its independence 1971, has the world’s richest country per capita and ruled since mid-19th century by the Al Thani’s family. Qatar has also been identified as a middle power due to the ways it has projected itself to the world and Qatar is also an influential player in the Arab world.

Qatar has a population of 1.8 million people according to 2013 report which also states Qatari citizens are only 280,000 of the population while expatriates are 1.5 million people. This makes Qatari nationals merely 13% of the country’s population. According to 2013 report, Qatar has 545,000 Indians, 341,000 Nepalese, 185,000 Filipinos, 137,000 Bangladeshis, 100,000 Sri Lankans, 90,000 Pakistanis and many other nationals. This is the biggest ratio of migrants-to-citizens in the world.

Qatar will be the first Arab country to host the FIFA World Cup having won the controversial bid to host the 2022 World Cup and this marks the beginning of man slaughter in workplaces in Qatar. Though there are talks that the small but wealthy Gulf state would be stripped of the competition, amid allegations of corruption at world football’s governing body FIFA. “Qatar 2022 is now being investigated; FBI and Swiss are counting the alleged cost of bribes while Nepal is counting the actual cost of lives”. But will this justify or make up for the blood of innocent and harmless migrant workers who are killed every other day (an average of one death per day) in Qatar workplaces and yet the world seems to pay deaf ears? We allow evil to prevail when the good ones who ought to speak keep a total silence and that is currently the case in Qatar. The government of Nepal leads the position of utmost silence that is interpreted to mean “you cannot bite the finger that feeds you”. Really sad because silence connotes endorsement.

Recently, a story of a Nepalese named Shiva Tamanga who was murdered in Qatar by a Bulldozer in construction site on 19^th April, 2015 as reported by John Irvine, a Senior Special Correspondence at ITV. Shiva only left Nepal to work in Qatar six months before his workplace death leaving behind his pregnant wife; he was brought back to Kathmandu international airport in a coffin after six months. As monks chanted at his cremation, his mother wailed and his widow passed out. This is the story of Shiva Tamanga, one man down but who is next as Qatar’s construction continues.

A number of hardships are suffered daily by migrant workers in Qatar. According to ITV correspondence, one of the Nepalese migrant workers he interviewed anonymously complained about poor treatment and rotten food leading to food poisoning resulting in deaths of three to four workers in his company in Doha each month. He also complained he was having his holiday for the first time in three years because his employer has always refused to release him. He was eventually allowed to go home on this holiday on the condition that he accompanies a body (dead worker) in this journey.

If the world indeed gathers in 2022 to either play or watch world cup matches played in Qatar that will be seen as a global approval and justification for the gruesome deaths of those migrant workers who fall victims to poor labour legislation that has fanned into flame uncontrollable unsafe workplaces scattered all over Qatar. The speed at which construction of roads, stadia, new hotels and other facilities are currently going on at the expense of the huge population of migrant workers currently working in Qatar, needs to be brought to global pedestal for objective balancing. This is wicked, shrewd, rude, inhuman, and unacceptable and must be collectively criticized in one voice. The voice of the blood of innocent workers killed in Qatar cries so loud yet everyone pretends not to hear.

 

According to a recent graphics from Washington Post which suggested that as many as 1,200 migrant workers have died in Qatar since 2010, compared to handfuls of deaths before other recent global sporting events. A number of media outlets worldwide – including Channel 4 News repeated that figure of 1,200 deaths while the Qatar government has responded disclaiming those figures and tag them as untrue. These 1,200 deaths are claimed to be nationals of India and Nepal alone according to figures released by local embassies of both countries.

If indeed these figures are untrue, it is the responsibility of the government of Qatar to tell us the truth supported with evidence.

You will agree with me that most of these deaths are not reported and even deaths that are occupational risk induced could also be wrongly classified. The reason is not far from the poor Labour Legislation in Qatar. In any event, the source of the “1,200 death” figure  which originates in the 2013 report by the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC) is simply the total deaths among the Indian and Nepalese migrant population, not deaths from accident alone or just deaths among construction workers.

So how many people have died while working specifically on World Cup 2022 projects? We do not know but this government of Qatar says it is ZERO! The question is how true is this claim by the government?

There are many numbers of quotes out there like the one in this report from German newspaper Die Welt: “some time ago, Hamid said a worker fell to his death from the roof of a building on an adjacent construction site. In November, 2014 a man had been burnt to death in a fire incidence”.

But this is hearsay, the kind of evidence that would not stand up in a British court, and it is not clear whether the “adjacent construction site” had anything to do with the World Cup. But Amnesty International says it has “no reason to doubt” the claims that no lives have been lost on World Cup construction sites, although it argues that we need a broader definition of World Cup-related building work, saying: “Most major construction projects in Qatar are related to the World Cup”.

The law firm DLA Piper which was contracted by the government of Qatar to carry out an independent review of Qatar’s labour laws, found evidence of at least 22 worker-related deaths among Indian, Nepalese and Bangladeshi migrants in 2013 alone. That is out of the 600 total deaths among migrant workers from these three countries in that year.  

Now we begin to wonder where the claims came from by the government of Qatar that no worker has died working in Qatar on the World Cup project, we are all worried and hold the opinion that Qatar government has a lot to hide in this regard. The earlier they tell the world the truth on this matter, the faster help comes their way.

How dangerous is working in Qatar?

The Qatar government’s press release gives the impression that there are no health risks at all attached to being a foreign worker in Qatar but quite the opposite is the fact. There are more than 1 million migrant workers in Qatar, the Global Burden of Disease published in “The Lancet” in 2012 states that more than 400 deaths might be expected annually from cardiovascular disease alone among Qatar’s migrant population.

Figure sourced separately by the Guardian from Nepalese authorities suggests the total deaths during that period could be as high as 188. In 2013, the figure from January to mid-November was 168.

“We Know that people who work long hours in high temperature are highly vulnerable to fatal heat stroke, so obviously these figures continue to cause alarm”, said Nicholas McGeehan, the Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch.

It is Qatar’s responsibility to determine if deaths are related to living and working conditions, but Qatar flatly rejected a DLA Piper recommendation to launch an immediate investigation into these deaths last year. It has been quoted in some quarters that the spate of the current heart attacks among migrant workers in Qatar is as a result of dehydration suffered by workers because they are not provided enough water to drink in their workplaces.

The Embassy of Nepal said 191 Nepalese workers died in 2013, adding that “most deaths were a result of cardiac arrest”, according to DLA Piper. A former Nepali Ambassador to Doha has put a more precise figure on the proportion of migrant worker death attributable to “sudden heart attack at 55%”.

Data on causes of death in Qatar is weak, the report adds, as autopsies and post mortem on people who die sudden and unexpected deaths are forbidden by Qatari law unless a crime is suspected. As things stand, there are few reliable statistics on workplace accidents and deaths in Qatar.

Qatar’s current health strategy document states: “Qatar’s vast population of male labourers, primarily in the construction industry, has limited access to healthcare services and also operates in hazardous environments”.

Workplace injuries are the third highest causes of accidental deaths in Qatar. And yet, Qatar does not have national occupational health standards or guidelines and there is limited data on workplace-related fatalities.

It becomes really difficult when even media professionals are not allowed to report on what’s going on in this country. Qatar gets a red rating from Reporters Without Borders, indicating a “difficult situation” for press freedom. Last month a BBC team was arrested and interrogated while trying to talk to migrant workers on fatalities and work conditions in the country.

I strongly believe this is an unhealthy practice that must be collectively condemned in strong words. You cannot expose workers to harsh and unsafe work conditions and want to shield this in secrecy. No, it does not work that way.

ITV News managed to film Nepalese workers in the country, as well as the families of dead migrant been flown back to Nepal in coffins. Nepal’s Minister for labour, Tek Bahadur Gurung, blamed the heart attacks on a problem of “orientation”, saying workers were dying after suddenly turning on the air conditioning in their living quarters.

The suggestion was that the Nepalese government would be reluctant to criticize foreign “partners” like Qatar given the amount of money sent back by Nepalese working abroad. These remittances made up 29 per cent of Nepal’s entire GDP in 2013/14. What a shame and human sacrifice by a country just to earn GDP at the expense of slayed citizens working abroad. It is not normal!

Sadly, we have seen that Nepalese migrant workers are faced with absolute betrayal from even the government of their home country. When truth is slaughtered on the altar of gains, this is always the result. The question is, “who now fights for the right of these helpless sets of people when those who are supposed to negotiate their rights have turned their faces against their collective hurts”. When a government issues a statement as this, it is taken as an approval of injustice and a continuation in status quo.

No matter the amount of remittances contributed to the GDP of Nepal, no amount of money is worth the slaughtering of healthy men who went to work in Qatar in quest of legitimate means of survival. The statement credited to Nepal’s Labour Minister should be used to make a case against him for aiding and abetting the increasing death of Nepalese migrant workers in Qatar. This is such a sorry state which I think Amnesty International should look into.

There are a number of other claims ranging from:

·   Migrant workers reduced to the status of slaves by the “Kafala” sponsorship system which means employers can confiscate passports of migrant workers and withdraw exit visas, effectively restricting them in Qatar.

·       Workers are denied trade union representation

·       Workers are often not paid in full or on time

·       Workers are exploited by recruiters who charge heavy fees from the migrant workers

·       They are forced to live in cramped accommodation of about 18 persons per room

This may only be a partial list, a number of issues possibly exist which are not accessible to the media because of the system that operates in Qatar.

The major report commissioned by Qatar into its treatment of migrant workers produced more than 60 suggested reforms and a confirmation that hundreds of migrants have died and many of them from unexplained sudden illnesses over the past two years, at a rate of more than one death a day. The report by international law firm DLA Piper calls for changes in the much criticized “kafala” system that ties workers to their employers.

Though the artists’ impressions of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup venues, like the Qatar Foundation Stadium, are impressive - but criticism over treatment of migrant workers has dogged the development.

It has been published in a number of papers that there has never been such high worker mortality recorded in the history of nations’ preparations to host the World Cup or any international sports tournament, from Beijing Olympics to Brazil World Cup. A number of people have though argued from different quarters that the deaths in Qatar has nothing to do with the World Cup because construction has been on-going in Qatar even without the World Cup host plan. But the Director of campaign of the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC), Tim Noonan says “although the World Cup stadium was only started last year, subways, hotels, and even an entire city are currently being built, not to mention an airport, numerous roads, a new sewage system in central Doha and 20 skyscrapers. “It needs to be remembered that the infrastructure program in Qatar is entirely built around the delivery date of the World Cup in Qatar”. Tim also said about 900 foreign workers will die per year in Qatar in the years leading to the tournament.

I took time to do this report using information that have been published on the ills in Qatar hoping it will create clarity on these health and safety concerns centered around the migrant workers in that country. We cannot all pretend to keep quiet over these issues while every day that passes, a migrant worker dies. They must not be our relatives before we show honest concerns, we must first see ourselves as “We” (fellow global citizens) before we see ourselves as “I”. “We are all we have”, when we close our eyes to the death of innocent migrant workers, we reduce our collective strength. “The weak needs the strong to stand for him and the strong needs the weak to show the might of his strength”, we all may not have voice that can be far heard but he who has lost his voice needs a brother to speak for him.

The whole world and global political powers may pretend not to know about the goings-on in Qatar, but we all need to remember that we are accountable to our own conscience. As popularly put by the Nigerian Guardian newspapers “Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it”.  I will rather be caught speaking or fighting for a cause than take the non-partisan position for fear of being tagged. What is wrong is wrong, no matter the balances where they are weighed and it is our responsibility to speak against them in clear terms.

It will make a global sense, if we all rise and speak against this ill in Qatar and migrant workers get saved than getting excited watching matches in Qatar stadia stained by the blood innocent migrant workers.

I am only an Occupational Health and Safety practitioner in Nigeria and these are my concerns.

I can be reached at: ehi@ohsm.com.ng

References

www.wsj.com: Rory Jones

www.itv.com : John Irvine

www.bbc.com

www.theguardian.com
www.blogs.channel14.com
www.rt.com/news

GLOBAL HAND WASHING DAY OCTOBER 15: "CLEAN HANDS SAVE LIVES"

Today, October 15 is Global Hand Washing Day (GHD) a day set aside by the United Nations in 2008 in Stockholm to initiate Public Private Partnership for Hand Washing (PPPHW). The theme for this year is “Clean Hands Save Lives”.

Hand washing with soap and water is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent infectious diseases as diarrheal and acute respiratory infections which take lives of children in developing countries and regions of the world. Even in healthcare, hand washing is the most effective prevention of healthcare acquired infection which is very prevalent within the healthcare space.

Hand hygiene as it is also called was discovered in the 19^th century by an Obstetrician called Ignaz Semmelweis while working at the University of Vienna. He discovered that there was a high difference regarding Puerperal fever in women in two different wards. A Puerperal infection otherwise known as puerperal sepsis is a condition that occurs when a new mom experiences an infection related to giving birth. The ward with the highest prevalence of Puerperal fever was the one where medical students and Physicians delivered the women while the other wards, the women were delivered by midwives.

He also saw that medical students and Physicians went directly from performing autopsies to delivering women. He decided to add washing hands with chlorinated lime solution for the medical students and Physicians before going into delivery wards. He saw that the incidence of Puerperal fever decreased significantly from 16% to 3% in the most affected ward. In the wards where the midwives delivered the women it stayed the same 7%. And this became the turning point in the healthcare sector where hand washing became credited as a very key component of infection control. Now you know why we take it so seriously.

As we mark the Global Hand Washing Day today, please remember to tell someone hand washing save lives. Educate someone to wash hands after using the toilets, wash hands before and after food, wash hands before and after touching a sick person, wash hands before and after touching a broken skin. We cannot afford to add to the statistics, let’s just wash hands because it really costs us nothing.

Enjoy the rest of the hand washing day.

ehi@ohsm.com.ng

STRESS: AN IGNORED HEALTH RISK YET PRESENT WITH US

An issue i have been learning about and researching on lately is the issue of stress.

This has become a very key issue in our daily lives leading to cardiovascular diseases, burn outs, suicidal ideation, sleep disorders, obesity and even diabetes type 1 ans 2.

We all know the word stress without necessarily understanding what it truly means. "Stress simply put is your inability or lack of enough resources to deal with the demands the environment is placing on you". So stress is not only a condition of high demand but also a condition of low resources.

An imbalance is created when the demands placed in an organism is not in proportion with the organism's resources to respond. This imbalance situation comes in two folds. You have a situation where demands  are too high in relation to the resources we have, we will experience too active or overactive life. Another situation is when the demand is actually too low in relation to our resources, in this case we will feel so underutilized and feel a huge sense of frustration. This is because we have too much energy, too much aspirations, too many abilities that are not realized because we have no room for that. These two conditions are what puts us in stressful situations.

Stress in a general term is not all bad if :

• You have the resources to deal with it
• If it is just for a short term. It becomes bad when it persists for too long

Stress could either be acute or chronic. As a matter of fact stress is a condition caused by acute or chronic imbalance between demand and resources.

We have two types of stress namely:

• Eustress which is the good stress
• Distress which is the bad stress

One of the highest contributors to non communicable diseases (NCD) globally is stress, everyone is mutually stressed and we most times do nothing about it until it has sparked up many other health conditions.

Business executives are too busy to talk about stress, they do not see stress management as part of their business continuity plan neither do they at all look into the issue of stress within their organisations. Employees are present at work yet not able to deliver on their tasks and optimal production is far fetched. The issue most of these organisations are faced with today has moved from staff absenteeism due to ill health to presenteeism, no psychosocial support, absence of management support to deal with the issue of organisational stress. We must note that organisations do not exist in isolation, it is called organisation because of careful assemblage and harmonization (organisation) of all available resources needed to achieve the goal of the organisation. So if employees are an integral part of that resources and when they get stressed, the organisation will also be stressed. We all pretend to come to work yet deep within us, we are psychologically not present and this tells so much on our productivity yet it goes unnoticed because there are even to structures to measure and compare employees motivation and productivity.

We need to look at the threats in workplaces, we need to measure the health performance of our employees. We need to realign the whole work processes before we all kill our best hands and who are already emotionally stressed. Demand has been much on them and they having given so much that they have nothing to give anymore, they at this point become emotionally stressed psychologically hurt, we need to release them.

I will stop here and ask you top lease  follow me if you do not mind on this blog, i will be treating this issue in details in subsequent weeks linking it with sleep disorder (Insomnia, dyssomnia and apnea), the need to be physically active, the effect of built environment on health and benefits afterwards.

You can contact at ehi@ohsm.com.ng