"The recent heatwaves highlight the urgent need to update the list of occupational diseases" 29 June 2025

With the arrival of summer, human rights and trade union voices have raised demands to protect agricultural workers, construction workers, and others working in field occupations from sunstroke...These renewed demands come in the context of the “Taqatue Network for Defending Labor Rights,” alerting the public to the growing number of occupational hazards expressed by the high number of work accidents and mass transportation accidents, which annually leave thousands of victims among the dead, disabled, widows and orphans...

...Trade union activists include sunstroke in the category of occupational diseases, calling on the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to update the list of these diseases...“There is complete silence on the growing phenomenon of occupational diseases, in light of an unfair compensation system that enriches private companies instead of the National Social Security Fund.”...

... This requires the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to expedite the updating of the list of occupational diseases and avoid the logic of ignoring it, as was the case with the demand to include the coronavirus pandemic in this list...

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[Unofficial Arabic-to-English translation provided by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center]