The Environmental Health Council of Nigeria (EHCON) will hold its maiden stakeholders’ forum from today till Thursday at the NAF Conference Centre in Abuja.
With the theme ‘Developing Sustainable Environmental Health Business Model In Support of Nigeria’s Economic Diversification Drive’, the maiden forum is to further rebrand the profession of environmental health and break barriers and unlock opportunities. It will also address issues in financing, marketing, technology transfer and mentorship.
Register of the Council Dr. Yakubu Baba added that the forum will give stakeholders’ the platform to discuss and explore areas for collaborations to achieve common objectives.
The lead paper will be presented by Dean of the Faculty of Public Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Prof. Ana Godson, while sub-theme papers will be delivered by other experts.
Other international experts, including Prof. Susana Paixão, President of the Portuguese Society for Environmental Health and former President of the International Federation of Environmental Health; Ketan Dattani, a UK-based consultant on environmental health resourcing and development; and Dr. Jerry Chaka, a core professional who was once the chairman of the Environmental Health wing of the Health Professions Council of South Africa, among others, are also expected.
Baba had earlier expressed the Council’s readiness to partner the private sector to further improve environmental health.
He noted that since the law establishing EHCON as a professional regulatory body was passed in 2002, ‘it has issued about 17 professional guidelines and regulations that cut across various aspects of the private practice – from guidelines to sanitation in the aviation industry, guideline for accreditation of academic programmes in training institutions to guidelines on pest and vector control – to the trail blazer, the environmental health practice regulations which opened up the profession to the private sector’.
“The Council, in exercise of its role of environmental health practice regulation, has also opened a register and approved six practice areas, namely: inspection of premises; public health pest and vector control; waste collection; air quality monitoring, cleaning services and sewage collection.
“We have issued guidelines where people can come and invest. It is interesting to note that investment in such areas are avenues for rapid return on investment as the practice areas are basic life supporting services owing to their preventive and promotive attributes,” Baba added.