Over 500 Thousand Workers Benefit from Safety in the Heat Program

The “Safety in the Heat” programme is aimed at increasing awareness of heat stress and prevention of heat illness amongst employers and workers and to decrease heat related illnesses in the emirate during the summer months and runs from April to mid-October each year.

HAAD distributed over 65000 resource items including more than 20465 posters, 36000 workers and supervisor education pamphlets and 357 box sets for health and safety professionals containing training manuals, DVD videos and technical information sheets.

Dr. Omniyat Al Hajri, Director of Public Health and Policy at HAAD said: “The improvement of health and safety standards and ensuring the welfare of the workers in Abu Dhabi is an important objective of HAAD Public Health. We would not have achieved an ever increasing participation in the program each year without the collaboration and participation from government authorities such as the Abu Dhabi EHS Centre, the EHSMS Sector Regulatory Authorities, the Ministry of Labour and private companies in the Safety in the Heat summer program,

The HAAD Safety in the Heat programme has been running for 4 years and supports the Abu Dhabi EHSMS regulatory framework and Working in Heat Codes of Practice which were released earlier this year by raising awareness on this important common hazard each summer and provides employers with free resources to increase awareness and education about the measures required to control and prevent occupational hazards and reduce risks to workers health and safety” Dr. Omniyat added.

The safety in the heat materials have been developed to enable employers, health and safety professionals, supervisors and workers to understand the risks of heat stress and recognise the signs and symptoms of heat related illness as well as the precautions and control measures to be taken.

The “Safety in the Heat” programme for summer 2012 distributed free training packs, multi-lingual DVD videos, and worker and supervisors pamphlets, posters in five different languages, and a special edition poster for fasting workers in Ramadan.

Darren Joubert, Senior Advisor Occupational Health at HAAD, said: “The “Safety in the Heat” programme has gone from strength to strength and next year will be the 5th year anniversary of the programme with some exciting new developments and events planned and new materials available for free to all companies, employers, and supervisors to support employers to address this important issue each summer. We encourage companies throughout the UAE and other GCC countries to take the opportunity to access and use the free resources to raise awareness of this issue.”