EHORECON Calls On FG, To Streghten Environmental Health Services
Dr Yakubu Mohammed Baba, Director of Education and Training, Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON) has urged federal and state government to further strengthen Environmental Health Services (EHS) to reduce the cost of medical services in the country.
HSENations reports that the EHORECON Director stated this in an interview with Leadership Newspaper recently.
According to Dr Yakubu Mohammed Baba, the government failed to place Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) at the front burner in the management of public health issues rather, they take reactionary measures knowing prevention is better than cure.
“What is applicable in Nigeria is cure before prevention. When there are outbreaks, EHOs will be deployed to the affected areas for control measures instead of posting them to such places before the outbreak of diseases. Most of these issues emanate from the local government and why environmental health is not achieving much result is due to negligence at the local government level. Based on the statistics available to us in the council, some local governments have less than three or fours EHOs.
What magic will they do to sanitise the environment? “
He urged local and state governments to recruit more EHOs than recruiting more medical doctors so as to strengthen the Environmental Health Services and reduce the cost of medical services in the states.