Editorial
28 April 2017 World Day for Safety and Health at Work
April 2017
Sheila Pantry OBE
The annual World Day for Safety and Health at Work on 28 April promotes the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases globally. It is an awareness-raising campaign intended to focus international attention on the magnitude of the problem and on how promoting and creating a safety and health culture can help reduce the number of work-related injuries, diseases and fatalities worldwide.
With the celebration of the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, the ILO promotes the creation of a global preventative safety and health culture involving ILO constituents and all key stakeholders in this field. In many parts of the world, national authorities, trade unions, employers’ organizations and safety and health practitioners organize activities to celebrate this date. You and your organisations – large or small are invited to join in celebrating this significant day.
The 28 April is also the International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers organised worldwide by the trade union movement since 1996. Its purpose is to honour the memory of victims of occupational accidents and diseases by organizing worldwide mobilizations and awareness campaigns on this date.
28 April is seen as a day to raise international awareness on occupational safety and health among trade unions, employers’ organizations and government representatives alike. The ILO acknowledges the shared responsibility of key stakeholders and encourages them to promote a preventive safety and health culture to fulfil their obligations and responsibilities for preventing deaths, injuries and diseases in the workplace, allowing workers to return safely to their homes at the end of the working day.
Do whatever you can to ensure that all workers have a safer and healthier workplace in 2017.
Help is available by using the OSH UPDATE and Fire collection of 26 databases that gather together the information on all aspects working safely and healthily. This collection – now well into its second decade has over 1,137,489 records with over 102,801 full text document.
Take a free of charge 15 day free of charge trial to keep up to date contact www.sheilapantry.com/interest
Update your 2017 diary with training for workers at all levels
Whether you are a manager, safety representative, supervisors check out the training needed in your workplace. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events and you will see plans have been made already worldwide for 2017 and beyond to have training courses, symposiums, webinars and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects.
Do not put off training for yourself and your staff. In these days of tighter budgets perhaps training may be put on the “back-burner” – but think again how you can keep up with the latest techniques and training opportunities.
Remember that even if you cannot attend these many events, speakers and organisers are often willing to share their knowledge. Look at the details – where possible, we add in the web sites of these events so you can request further information. And do let me know if you are organising any OSHE events so that I can add them to the OSHWORLD Diary.
FOCUS
This month’s OSHWORLD FOCUS is entitled Mental Health for Health and Safety Professionals Conference on 11 May 2017
OSHWORLD – your portal to some great OSH web sites in the world
Wherever you are in the world have a look at your health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures in your workplace and update them. Your review may also indicate training requirements and re-thinking how systems and services can be improved. This is where the free-of-charge OSHWORLD can help you.
Resources
In addition to the above we hope that you find the information in OSHWORLD useful in your daily work. Globally there are continually new titles, news items, new products so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a range of worldwide sources.
Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites that you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. nanotechnology and the workplace.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources – so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources and also teaches you how to Search the Internet.
Visit the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Many of these Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD – your portal to validated and authoritative information. Remember also to look at our other really useful sites – www.sheilapantry.com and why not make a free entry about your company’s products in www.shebuyersguide.com.
Don’t forget to learn from history – visit
www.historyofosh.org.uk
An invaluable resource for students, lecturers, trainers, health and safety
professionals and others with a general interest in industrial history, the site
sets out developments from the 1802 Factory Act all the way through to the most
recent regulatory changes made by the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Don’t work harder – work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2016 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2017!
And do continue to make plans for your campaigns for 2017 and beyond!