World Health Organization

"...the workplace directly influences the physical, mental, economic and social well-being of workers and in turn the health of their families, communities and society. It offers an ideal setting and infrastructure to support the promotion of health of a large audience. The health of workers is also affected by non-work related factors.

Proper attention to workers' health and safety has extensive benefits:

• healthy workers are productive and raise healthy families; thus healthy workers are a key strategy, i.e. goal, for overcoming poverty.

• workplace health risks are higher in the informal sector and small industry which are key arenas of action on poverty alleviation, where people can work their way out of poverty;

• safe workplaces contribute to sustainable development, which is the key to poverty reduction;

• the processes of protecting workers, surrounding communities and the environment for future generations have important common elements, such as pollution control and exposure reduction;

• much pollution and many environmental exposures that are hazardous to health arise from industrial processes, that may be influenced by occupational health and safety programmes;

• occupational safety and health can contribute to improving the employability of workers, through workplace (re)design, maintenance of a healthy and safe work environment, training and retraining, assessment of work demands, medical diagnosis, health screening and assessment of functional capacities;

• occupational health is fundamental to public health, for it is increasingly clear that major diseases  need workplace programmes as part of the disease control strategy. "

Abstract of the Enterprise for Health ( EfH) Conference Publication

• In the European Union (EU)  there were about 4.4 million accidents at work resulting in more than 3 days absence by the employees involved

• Each year in the EU 350 million working days are lost due to work-related health problems and almost 210 million due to accidents at work

• 35% of workers consider that their health is negatively affected by their work

• The costs of workplace-related illnesses in Europe are estimated to be between 2.6% to 3.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).