Occupational Health

Abstract

The Department of Occupational Health of the Ministry of Health of the Government of Kuwait was established in 1965. Its first Director came to Kuwait after long experience of occupational health in the United Arab Republic. Prior to this, the Kuwait Oil Company had established criteria for recognition and control of occupational health problems within its own preventive medicine division. Coincidental with the Government’s action the Company appointed its first full-time occupational health physician and technical assistant and over the next few years there developed close cooperation between Government and Oil Company, particularly within the field of the environmental health of petroleum workers. This was fortuitous but at the same time providential, for within a few years the Government itself entered the field of oil production with the establishment of the Kuwait National Petroleum Company, refining at Shuaiba and undertaking exploratory operations through its Spanish associates. Kuwait has presented a foretaste of industrial manning problems which are now being felt by other developing countries with small indigenous populations and large natural resources requiring expatriate labour forces to work them.