The Environmental Health Council of Nigeria (EHCON) has commenced a review of its guidelines to reposition the environmental health system in the country and mitigate emerging environmental health challenges.

Yakubu Baba, the council’s registrar, said this at the technical review meeting on guidelines for environmental health practice in the country on Thursday in Abuja.

He emphasised that the overall goal was to improve the health of the populace.

Mr Baba identified some emerging and reemerging issues in environmental health, such as climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, among others.

He said climate change had become a reality, adding that the Environmental Health Council is in the right position to contribute significantly to issues bordering on mitigation, adaptation, and resilience in the climate change structure.

“So, these are the issues that are emerging and reemerging. We are expecting another emerging and reemerging disease; we have to prepare and have instruments and also build the capacity of our men to be able to address these challenges,” he said.

Mr Baba, who said no fewer than 14 critical instruments would be reviewed at the meeting, identified some instruments as a review of the National Environmental Health Practice Regulation, monitoring, evaluation and surveillance system.

Others are the delineation of functions and roles of environmental health practitioners, development of the council’s strategic plan, review of the National Institute of Environmental Health, development of tools for monitoring and evaluation of practice, and development of a strategic plan for the council.

The registrar said the intention of the council is to have an instrument that would strengthen the practitioners and also reinvigorate the practice of environmental health in Nigeria.

“These instructions determine our survival as practitioners. Considering the council’s Act, it gives it a lot of power to regulate the practice of the environmental health profession, but without these instruments, we are seeing a lot of gaps.

“The essence is to strengthen the practitioners and also to reinvigorate the practice of environmental health and meet global standards.

“The aim is also to strengthen the practice and reposition the profession as part of the agenda of our rebranding process of environmental health in Nigeria,” he said.

The registrar said the National Environmental Health Practice Regulation was last reviewed in 2015, adding that the meeting would consider its review to encapsulate new issues that were not initially covered in the regulation.

He further said there was a need to consider the document on the standard delineation of roles and functions of environmental professionals in Nigeria to rid the system of overlap as well as conflict among practitioners at the local, state and federal levels.

Shehu Muhammad, the chief facilitator of the meeting, said the era of having practitioners who are jacks of all trades and masters of none is gone.

He said the focus at the moment is specialisation, to create practitioners that have knowledge and skills in one or two areas of environmental health.

“Our jobs as facilitators is to ensure that we improve the health of the populace, look at the policies we use in implementing environmental health laws in states, identify the gaps in the laws and ensure we fill in those gaps.

“Update the regulations so that they will be able to deal with all environmental health issues around our environment, like emerging diseases.

”Part of what we are doing here is to develop documents that will enhance the skills of professionals to be able to take control of diseases,“ Mr Muhammad said.

Participants at the meeting from both public and private sectors were drawn from academia, local governments, states and federal, among others.

 (NAN)