Dr Huda al-Naemi, executive director, Occupational Health and Safety Department.

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has not witnessed even a single accident related to the occupational environment in the last three years, an official has said.
“HMC has more than 22,000 staff and training is mandatory for everyone to make sure that the work environment is safe and healthy,” said Dr Huda al-Naemi, executive director, Occupational Health and Safety Department.
Speaking on the sidelines of the first Occupational Environment and Human Health Conference 2015 yesterday, she said: “All the staff need to be well trained. This can help them equipped with all the safety measures and can avoid any disasters. This is an ongoing process.”
“More than 500 staff joined the conference within 48 hours of opening the registration. We have many new staff joining on a daily basis and everyone has to be trained. There is also a rotation practice in HMC and people need to be oriented and reoriented.”
The training programme enables the staff to face the occupational environment far more confidently, as a lot of hazardous chemicals and other materials are used in hospitals.
“Each chemical item or other material used in a hospital, has a chemical data sheet. The safety data sheet tells you about the requirements and how to deal with the chemicals and other materials. We have to make sure that it does not create any serious problems for the staff,” she pointed out.
Dr al-Naemi also said that the diversity of the staff is one of the major challenges in conducting the training. “We have a large staff and they all speak different languages. To convey the message through a common language is difficult and we have to arrange the training sessions in different
languages,” she added.