Council to upgrade environmental health officers’ curriculum

To address environmental health challenges and ensure better services for the populace, Environmental Health Officers Registration Council (EHORECON) has moved to upgrade its programmes in tertiary institutions in the country.

The council is partnering with the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to realise this new move. It has also concluded arrangements with Federal University of Technology, Owerri, and Kwara State University, Mallette for abridged B.Tech and BSc for environmental health officers.

The Minister of State for Environment, Ibrahim Jibril who stated this at a forum in Abuja, said government has provided support for development of benchmark for Bachelor of Environmental Health Science.

He explained that the curriculum development has a broad scope not only about the school, the learners and the teachers, but also the improvement of the society in general.

“Current effort is to align the fulcrum of professional practices with technologists to their proper role of providing support to the scientific trends. This would play a vital role in improving the economy.”

According to him, it would also provide answers and solutions to the world’s pressing conditions and problems such as environment, politics, socio-economic, and other issues of poverty, and climate change.

Also speaking, Registrar of EHORECON, Dr. Dominic Abonyi expressed optimism that the collaboration between EHORECON and NBTE would yield results, especially curricula for Environmental Health Technology.

He emphasised that the council would not relent to support genuine efforts aimed at improving the capacity of environmental health professionals to deliver on their expected mandates.

“We have developed benchmark for minimum academic standard for Bachelor of Environmental Health Science (BEHS) degree in collaboration with National Universities Commission (NUC)” he added.

Explaining further, he said the initiative has commenced at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Kwara State University, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, University of Ibadan and National Open University.

On his part, NBTE Executive Secretary, Dr. Adamu Kazaure called for regular review of the curricula every two year to update and capture modern trend, and for sustainable development.