Saudi Arabian expatriate worker fitness-screening programme: a review of 14 years of data

Expatriate workers must be medically examined in their country of origin at accredited centres prior to their arrival in any Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country and are reexamined when they enter the country. This review investigated the epidemiological profile of registered expatriate workers in Saudi Arabia who were found medically unfit to work. A descriptive analysis was performed on 4,272,480 records of a Ministry of Health database from 1997 to 2010. The greatest proportion of workers was from Indonesia (34.3%). The total proportion of unfit expatriate workers was low (0.71%). The highest rate of unfitness was among workers from Ethiopia (4.06%), followed by Somalia (2.41%). Hepatitis B infection was the most common cause (57.5%), followed by noncommunicable diseases (21.2%) and hepatitis C infection (17.4%). This review suggests that the total number of workers registered in the Saudi Ministry of Health was underestimated, and the rate of unfit workers was lower than for other GCC countries, suggesting that standards and quality assurance in Saudi laboratories require revision.