Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Abstract

Providing high-quality health care should not be hazardous to the health worker, therefore the concept of occupational health safety is becoming prime concern especially for Healthcare workers. Many frontline health workers face a wide range of occupational safety and health hazard including physical, biological, chemical, psychosocial and gender-based violence and discrimination. It is argued regarding the amount of acceptable level of risk that healthcare workers put on themselves in order to perform their job, especially while providing healthcare to communities in a conflict zone. Recently in Pakistan, polio workers have been targeted that has resulted in verbal threat, kidnapping, injuries and more significantly to killing or loss of life of healthcare workers. The militants has their justified reason for this act that is basically the result of huge mistrust on public health intervention because of fake hepatitis vaccination program that was run by CIA and used Pakistani doctor to obtain DNA from Osama bin Laden’s suspected hideout. The focus of public health intervention is on improving quality of life of population whereas, occupational safety emphasis greater concern on safety of healthcare worker because if healthcare workers are not protected then wellness of society cannot be assured. This article illustrates the tension that exists between occupational safety and public health measures in the situation of conflict. Developing counties are already facing healthcare workforce shortage and saving lives should not be accomplished by sacrificing provider’s own lives. Millennium Development Goals for health cannot be achieved without healthy, well-prepared, motivated healthcare workers and that can only be done by ensuring their occupational health safety.

Biography

Email: sumaira.khowaja@yahoo.com