OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY IN INDUSTRIES IN DEVELOPING WORLD

Current global workforce stands at about 2.8 billion. Workers spend about one third of their lifetime at workplace. Workers expect safe working environment as their fundamental human right. However there are still poor working conditions especially in developing countries due to lack of practicing simple preventive measures. The standard of Occupational health and safety available at any work place is the main determinant of workers’ health. Workers all over the world, face dual occupational hazards, the traditional as well as novel in the complex work settings due to rapid industrialization, technological advancement and globalization, over the last few years. An equally wide variety of chemical, physical and psychological hazards in production. Occupational health issues affect individuals, families and communities, as well as the citizens of the world. All the stake holders including the state, the manager, the employer and the worker have certain responsibilities to take up medical, engineering and legislative interventions to make work environment safer. This review study was conducted at Department of Community Medicine, Gomal Medical College, D.I.Khan from October 9, 2016 to November 30, 2016. Qualitative, secondary data was collected through literature search. MEDLINE (PubMed), Google scholar and Pakmedinet were searched out employing relevant keywords from 2000 onwards until January 2017. Data was organized, summarized, analyzed interpreted. The objective of the study was to identify existing gaps on occupational health and safety in industries in developing countries and propose future research areas.