What is Occupational Health?
 
Occupational Health and Safety is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with ensuring protection, safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work.  It aims to promote and maintain the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations, and the protection of workers in their employment from risks which are adverse to health.

Our Role:
 
Our mission is to promote and protect the health of working people in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi with regard to occupational hazards and reduce the burden of work related injuries and diseases on the health care system, employers and individuals.
 
Our vision:

“Healthy People in a Healthy Work Environment.”
 
We aim to achieve this through:

• Health promotion and education programmes
• Development of protocols, policies and standards
• Support of relevant scientific research in occupational health
• Building partnerships and collaborating with relevant occupational health stakeholders

In particular we work to implement and apply the 10 objectives of the WHO global strategy for occupational health as a  strong base from which to build a world class system from and in particular our focus is to:

• Develop a strong evidence base for Abu Dhabi Occupational Health and drive targeted research into priority areas.  
• Prioritise Occupational Health issues and prevent and control of occupational disease and injuries in all workplaces in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
• Improve data collection and quality in regards to workplace injuries and diseases.
• Develop occupational health policies, guidelines, protocols, standards, and information resources
• Improving and develop occupational health services provided by healthcare facilities and health partners.
• Collaborate with and influence other key stakeholders and role players in occupational health activities

HAAD Occupational Health and Safety is currently focusing on the following key areas:

1. Surveillance, Prevention and Control of occupational injuries through working with National and International stakeholders, and related governmental bodies to develop and implement health and safety standards, policies and data systems.
2. Development of protocols and intervention programmes to prevent work related illnesses and injuries for specific working conditions, e.g. work in hot environments and falling from heights etc.
3. Development of occupational health standards based on scientific risk assessment
4. Improving and strengthening of occupational health services provided in and by healthcare facilities.

Achievements to date
 
To date, the Occupational Health team has successfully implemented an awareness and education programme for working safely in hot environments covering over 800,000 workers, has developed a hospital based injury surveillance system for monitoring of work place injuries and facilitated key collaborations with relevant government authorities and agencies e.g.: Ministry of Labour and private companies agencies.