Nigeria develops guidelines to strengthen environmental health practice

 Zeniat Abubakar, Abuja

The environmental health officer’s regulations council of nigeria, ehorecon has developed four guidelines as a safeguard to strengthen practices of environmental health in nigeria.

The four guidelines are addition to about sixteen guidelines produced by the Council since inception.

The Registrar, Environmental Health Officers Registration of Nigeria, Dr. Yakubu Baba Mohammed stated this at the stakeholders critique meeting on the development of guidelines for the Control of pest and vectors infestation in Nigeria held in Abuja the nation’s capital.

He said the vision of the Council is to review all the sixteen existing guidelines produced and issued by the first and second Council members in 2022.

Dr. Muhammed said it is the important for the Council to also give the rundown of the meeting achievement it has done after the stakeholders meeting, because it is important to evaluate the progress of the council.

He noted that Council is also working closely with the directorate of Pollution Control and Environmental Health for the creation of department environmental health in the ministry of environment.

“The critique meeting or the guidelines identify as critical to the practice of environmental health, The development of guidelines for premises inspections, with the environmental Health officers our major work is the inspection of premise because through the inspection of the premises you can be able to identify the issue of housing problem, the issue of toilet facilities in the premises and also the new concept of the profession is desertification of the premises, were the EHO’s can be able to used method in the inspection of the premises through what we called certification of habitation, certification for continue habitation among others. Another guidelines is that it is very critical at this point in time is the guidelines for operation in terms of what we called public health, pest and pest control.” Dr Muhammed explained.

He said the guidelines would also be explicit given the new technology by which the environmental Health practitioners in the local government can also reduced drastically the number of control pest and vectors.

The Registrar, Environmental Health Officers Registration of Nigeria, Dr. Yakubu Mohammed also called on the local government across the country to invest in recruiting of environmental health workers, stressing that if the country can get it right the issue of indexes of diseases will reduced.

He said order N0 9 of the open defecation by President Muhammadu Buhari can be achieved if the local government key into the government policy and recruit more environmental health officers.

“The ministry has engaged a substantial number of officers, by 2022 the ministry will develop their capacity on the sectoral level and the ministry will deployed them to all the relevant stakeholders, ministry to coordinate environmental health.” The Registrar added.

The Registrar Secretary General Postgraduate college of environmental Health in Nigeria, from the University of Owerri, Professor Agwu Amadi said no profession can do well without any guidelines which he said was very timely and in line with the rebranding process of environment in Nigeria.

“He said there is need for environmental Health officers and practitioners to be recruited, because every community require an environmental officers. Take for instance a community with five thousand inhabitance, one thousand inhabitance without any health officer cannot achieved anything.” Professor Amadi explained.

He added that the government as a matter of urgency need to ensure the recruitment and employment of environmental practitioners in all tiers of government if the country’s must achieved environmental sustainability.

Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria EHORECON, is an agency under the federal ministry of environment charged with the responsibility of regulating Environmental Health profession in Nigeria.

It is also responsible for carrying out measures for protecting public health, including administering and enforcing legislation related to environmental health and providing support to minimize health and safety hazards.