Almost all countries with successful occupational health systems have a national institute and there are many similar institutes to NIOH around the world.  This does not imply that having a national institute necessarily guarantees a good OHS system, but such institutes do seem to be essential components of good systems.
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The National Institute for Occupational Health is South Africa’s major centre for occupational health development, training, service support and research, with a staff of 120 people of whom half are scientists. The National Institute for Occupational Health (NIOH) has existed in various forms since the 1950s.
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The medium term goals of NIOH are:

• To be a national and regional reference centre, which will network with complementary national and provincial resources to provide leadership and support for the development of effective occupational health services; and
• To maintain and further develop specialist reference laboratory, advisory and information services centrally and peripherally.

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NIOH has traditionally focused on under served workers and those without access to occupational health care, in addition to providing a referral centre for access to expertise in a wide variety of occupational health disciplines. Financed by public funds, NIOH has served as a centre of excellence within the public health system with emphasis on researching and finding solutions to major occupational health problems, particularly those pertaining to vulnerable groups.
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The primary responsibility of NIOH is to develop and support occupational health initiatives to improve and maintain the health of the South African workforce which is estimated to be about 11.5 million workers.  With a relatively small core staff of less than 100, fulfilling a meaningful role requires focusing on priority exposures and diseases and collaborating with all national occupational health practitioners to start to support all elements of the occupational health system, including the inspectorates, public sector and enterprise level occupational health services.
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As with many developing and even developed countries, South Africa has a dearth of accurate statistics on the incidence and prevalence of occupational diseases and hazard exposure.  Establishment of a robust and reliable national occupational disease surveillance system is a high priority both in a nationally and global context to benchmark the current status and to develop occupational health indicators for South Africa to assess improvement.
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