**3.2 Health, work and sustainable development**

Health is central to the sustainable development of nations globally, hence ensuring healthy living and promoting wellbeing of people has been included as a whole goal in the sustainable development agenda [14]. According to Alamu [15], sustainable development is the organizing principle for meeting human development goals while at the same time sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystems services upon which the economy and society depends. WHO [16] defined sustainable development as a strategy for meeting the present generation's needs without compromising the future generation's ability of meeting their needs. This implies that globally, human health is recognized as a prerequisite for the attainment of sustainable and productive economy.

In terms of occupational health, the attainment of sustainable development implies the satisfaction of material needs through work and other production processes without causing danger to one's health, environment, as well as the community resource base in both short and long terms. Occupational health is a basic element and constitutes a social and health dimension of the principle of sustainable development.

It could be summarized that unsafe and unhealthy workplace environment, especially in terms of poor ventilation, inappropriate lighting, excessive noise among others, affect workers performance [17].
