Low-paid migrant workers in the Gulf are subject to a combination of risks to their physical and mental health. These risks originate from the workplace, their living conditions (encompassing their accommodation and their broader neighbourhoods), and the environment. They vary in seriousness, and they are to varying extents under-researched and under-reported...

Heat and humidity is one of the risks that can be most easily measured, and where protection is most obviously lacking. Researchers in Kuwait found in 2020 that non-Kuwaiti males were vulnerable to hot temperatures “with a doubling to tripling risk of mortality.”...

Medical researchers believe that migrant workers in the Gulf may also be suffering from a form of chronic kidney disease, CKDnt, which appears to disproportionately affect men performing strenuous work in hot climates...

These risks are compounded by abusive working conditions, which often include excessive working hours. Occupational health specialists have partly attributed the disproportionately high rate of male deaths from occupational diseases - 80% of the global total deaths involve men - to their involvement in occupations with a heavy physical workload.9 Workers in sectors like construction also face risks to their physical health as a result of the dangers inherent in such work and lax occupational health and safety (OHS) practices.

Many migrant workers are exposed to long term chronic psychosocial stress that, the scientific evidence suggests, is likely to have a detrimental impact on their mental and physical health...

Many of the factors that cause negative mental health outcomes also impact workers’ physical health. A survey in Kerala found a significantly higher rate of hypertension among subjects who had been migrant workers in the Gulf versus those who had not...