Ahmed J Versi, Doha, Qatar

Understanding and addressing the issues faced by migrant workers in all countries should be one of the true legacies of holding the World Cup in Qatar, according to Professor Vidya Mohamed-Ali of University College London.

In many instances, instead of football, the treatment of migrant workers was a major focus of this month’s quadrennial tournament, with the Guardian newspaper claiming back in 2021 that there had been a staggering 6,500 migrants who had died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded a decade ago, controversially implying that the total number of fatalities was somehow directly linked to the World Cup construction.

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, who was a panellist at the WISH Summit in Doha, described earlier that this figure was “a myth.”

The deaths were spread over ten years since the awarding of the World Cup hosting rights to Qatar, but not all were related to the tournament.

The medical professor, who is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Metabolism & Inflammation, was among those approached to be members of the advisory board to undertake a report ‘Promoting health and wellbeing among the migrant workforce’ set up by the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) in Doha.
Being of Indian origins herself, Vidya has a particular interest, having also specialised for the past 30 years in the UK on the health of S Asians, who make up much of the migrant workforce in Qatar.

In an interview with The Muslim News, the Deputy Director suggested that the issues facing migrant workers, not only in Qatar but around the world, including in the West, cannot be looked at in isolation, saying that they came with “certain vulnerabilities” as well as particular health concerns that needed to be addressed.

“Nepal has the highest suicide rate in the world. Mental health is an issue in their countries of origin. So, when they come here [in Qatar], they come with an added vulnerability that the host country is often not aware of,” she pointed out.

There were also clinical concerns about “non-communicable diseases, which are a big problem” for people throughout the Indian subcontinent, she said. “You might look like a lean, mean fighting machine, but you have a predisposition to diabetes, hypertension, and obesity” and meant “the chances of you dying unexpectedly from a heart condition are very, very high, unacceptably high.”

“In the UK, there are three deaths, 3.1 deaths per 100,000 [people], and three-point-six deaths per 100,000 in the US. Here, there are about five, there’s one report suggests, 5 for 100,000, up to 8.7 per 100,000. If you go back to Nepal, India, it’s more like 28–35. And if you can get any reliable numbers at all. So, Qatar sits in the middle. You can see, immediately, lots of room for improvement in every way,” the professor argued.

While the context differs across countries and regions, the report suggested that governments as well as employers have a duty to ensure the health and well-being of the international migrant workforce. It proposed that a global-orientated framework was needed to set minimum standards and health policies for international migrant workers.

Professor Vidya has been working for the last 30 years on the health of S Asians, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis, “because we see them as a big drain on the National Health [Service] in the UK. So, that’s exactly what’s happening here as well. So, for me, it was, what can we do to prevent these diseases?”
“We should be in the era of saying why, and what can I do to make it right.”

Therefore, they have embarked on a “precision medicine programme on these migrant workers, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, where we’re going to try and give a kind of precision medicine, which is personalised medicine, along with a genotype considering their phenotype, everything together. And to say, this is the best medicine for you. You have a risk for this for any of those. We want to understand them.”

The report outlined many challenges that needed to be met relating to migrant worker awareness of rights to safe working conditions and healthcare services, and that there should be “a concerted effort to engage more directly with low-wage workers to understand their needs and adapt programmes and materials to address these needs in a user-centred way.”

Photo: Prof. Vidya Mohamed-Ali, Deputy Director, Centre for Metabolism and Inflammation at University College London. (Credit: Wish Summit)