The challenges confronted by Environmental well being Practitioners in Nigeria

By Aniefiok Moses, FRSH, FSEH, MEN, PhD

Culled from Journal Of Environmental Well being, Vol 3, No 2, June 2006

For the aim of this dialogue, we will contemplate the challenges below three important heading. These are
• Structural and political
• Attitudinal and psychological (human Elements
• Attitudinal and technological
Structural and political
The Nigerian nation well being coverage (revised) and well being useful resource allocation are skewed in favour of healing providers. Though the well being coverage emphasised main well being care as its nook stone, budgetary provision has been intentionally made to strengthen and maintain costly medical care on the expense of preventive well being providers on the ratio of 5: 1. Once more the full price range for the well being sector has continued to fall wanting World Well being Group’s advisable 11% of complete budge to be allotted to well being in growing international locations. The shortage of fairness within the allocation of well being assets to maintain the system going. Disproportionate allocation of useful resource to preventive well being providers began from the time of first nationwide growth plan, the place allocation was N6.0m for healing and N1.0M for preventive well being service. This pattern has continued unabated to this point. Equally, the proposed Nationwide Well being invoice being described as nationwide hospital and well being facility invoice” has been drafted to strengthen the availability of medical providers within the proposed invoice.
Clearly, environmental well being providers are useful resource intensive and the result is normally intangible at the least not instantly, not like constructing a well being Centre or procuring an ambulance for the district cottage hospital. Politicians are normally engulfed on this net of maneuvering assets to please the sensibility of the general public on the expense of their well being. The politicians find yourself utilizing public assets to construct illness palaces and create a vicious circle the place sick of malaria, as an example, go to the hospital to get ‘cured’ and returned to neighborhood, get sick once more and return to the hospital once more; and this course of proceed unstopped. Though we at all times recite that prevention is healthier and cheaper than remedy, the reverse is the order in our society.
Properly! A side of environmental well being which normally attracts the eye of the politicians is strong waste disposal. Their purpose is to maneuver the waste from sight in an try to keep up clear surroundings and in addition to offer patronage to political stooge by hiring any supported as a waste administration contractor. On the finish extra confusion is created because the emergency contractors moved and dump waste in all places with none recourse to public well being implications of their actions. That is what may be termed politicking with the well being of the general public. Inside this situation, far more is spent on well being whereas little or no is achieved. Subsequently, there's an pressing have to reverse this pattern to place environmental well being on the nationwide agenda. Environmental well being providers must be effectively deliberate and applied. There must be public-private sector collaboration in a well-coordinated system the place professionalism and experience are the watch phrase.
Attitudinal and psychological (human issue)
We now have earlier began that environmental well being observe and providers are each human centered. This makes it probably the most tough professions, attitudes and normal lifestyle. It entails ‘probing’ into individuals’s privateness and difficult their very lifestyle. More often than not the job of inspection and abatement of nuisances contain getting into individuals’s sitting room, bed room, kitchen and bathroom. Because of this, the practitioners are at all times in touch with neighborhood members.
Invariably, most neighborhood members normally develop resistance to this ‘probing’ and may additionally develop and display some form of uncooperative attitudes. Whereas this persist, time is normally misplaced and generally the nuisance in query might trigger extra harm, which can be life threatening or might result in precise lack of lives.
Alternatively, the practitioners’ perspective and normal disposition to their job and most people is at all times being known as to query. Most EH practitioners have been accused of insensitivity to public feeling and normal despondency to their job. Few practitioner have been accused of pursuing self-interest and materialism. A few of these accusation have been fairly embarrassing to the occupation. The best problem is the detrimental picture these perspective posed to the occupation. Some solutions have been on tips on how to sort out picture issues within the occupation. It's pertinent to state that the environmental well being officer’s registration council of Nigeria is positioned to cope with detrimental attitudes and tendencies of the practitioners and to make sure that the occupation achieved the target it was got down to obtain. On this respect, the council will do all in its energy to restrict detrimental perspective and guarantee compliance to set commonplace {and professional} code of ethics in order to protect the dignity of the occupation in any respect time.
In between the perspective of the general public and that of the practitioners are psychological points. Environmental well being relates with a number of different occupation {and professional} teams. Typically there are inter-professional squabbles with the intension to show skilled to superintend over public well being points, the tendency are at all times to tug down its materials towards all norms thereby creating inferiority complicated amongst its members. This complicated due to this fact impinged on the psychology of the practitioners both the aptitude to shift his focus from his skilled roles. Certainly, it is a very detrimental weapon which isn't solely meant to weaken the occupation, but in addition to ridicule its purpose and mandate together with its statutory duty to the general public.
Carefully hyperlink to that is the low instructional and socio-economic standing of the practitioners. As a occupation that relate intently to neighborhood members, the professionals are generally seen from the spectrum of these they serve. Economically, environmental well being service remains to be thought to be public service. Most individuals don't imagine that the providers must be paid for. Certainly, to this point over 99.1% of the practitioners are employed in public establishments and businesses. In reality, document from the council registry confirmed that not one of the 3,000 EHOs thus far registered is self-employed, with the low revenue of the practitioners, they're at all times seemed down upon. This creates detrimental socio-psychological impression on the practitioners and the occupation.
Low instructional standing of the practitioners is a good hindrance to environmental well being growth. The historical past of environmental well being signifies that from the inception of the occupation in Britain. The practitioners have been poorly skilled, albeit to the extent of expertise wanted on the time. As a extremely expert occupation, environmental well being practitioners must be effectively skilled and at all times prepared to answer the necessity of the society. The pedigree of environmental well being manpower growth has affected the standing of the occupation. The event of environmental well being occupation has additionally been hampered by insufficient personnel with the prerequisite information and expertise to operate effectively. Once more lack of useful resource individuals to impart the required information and expertise have been a severe hindrance to the event of the occupation. So far and earlier than the current effort by the council to reposition the occupation to satisfy the varied challenges, there was no college in Nigeria that supplied programs in environmental well being on the diploma degree. Because the BSc in environmental & epidemiology program in college of life, now Obafemi Awolowo College [OAU] was scrapped within the 80s, this system couldn't be mounted by another college within the nation. This case is prone to persist for a very long time until severe intervention is undertaken by related authorities businesses to liaise with establishment exterior Nigeria to ascertain linkage and change applications to construct up a vital mass of environmental well being trainers and school members that may have the ability to ship environmental well being core sources on the BSc diploma degree.
Environmental and Technological
The surroundings which the professionals function may be very hostile. Aside from insufficient primary infrastructures like good street, water provide and different facilities that presupposed to facilitate environmental well being providers, individuals consciousness about EH issues remains to be abysmally low. It's nonetheless very tough to indicate the connection between environmental well being elements like fifth, warmth, poor air flow, poor meals hygiene observe, and so forth. and the well being of the neighborhood. With such low consciousness, it's generally very tough to prescribe any type of technique to abate environmental nuisance that impression negatively on public well being. Certainly there's complete lack of environmental well being tradition in Nigeria.
Environmental well being expertise like environmental well being tradition is missing in Nigeria. A lot of the primary gear used for environmental well being providers are nonetheless being imported. To this finish such gear turns into very expensive and unaffordable. There's apparent related expertise hole. The heavy reliance on imported gear and sustenance of environment friendly environmental well being providers. The issue is compounded by lack of insufficient budgetary provision for gear, excessive price imported gear, fallacious selection of kit, diversion of kit to different makes use of, excessive inventory of out of date gear, poor technical assist, lack of upkeep tradition and lack of spare half.
The scenario requires pressing intervention. Nigerians are very inventive and modern. Public-private sector partnership would end in the potential of harnessing our enormous potentialities to develop residence grown expertise for environmental well being providers. Establishment like product and gear growth Company (PRODA), Enugu must be inspired to manufacture gear for environmental well being service. Certainly, there's have to look inward for community-based strategy to tackling environmental well being issues in order to make sure good well being and sustainable growth in Nigeria.

Conclusion
Enforcement of environmental well being requirements and rules is hinged on availability of enabling surroundings; structural re-alignment; centered, holistic and sustained environmental well being coverage which is pro-preventive well being; constructing constructive environmental well being tradition and acquisition of applicable expertise and correct reorientation of public notion and perspective in direction of environmental well being issues. For the occupation to satisfy the rising challenges there must be a deliberate coverage to extend funding to assist coaching of the practitioners and for the constructing of environmental well being infrastructure and expertise.
Environmental Well being Officers should search for data and develop capability to synthesize and make use of such data for his or her skilled growth. As a primary and important service, environmental well being shouldn't solely be seen as a public good, therefore fully public supplied; it also needs to be seen as a imply to attaining a greater well being, certainly as window to buy well being for all (HFA), which seem very illusory problem and depart behind each cynicism and transfer ahead with renewed vigor to vary the environmental well being panorama for posterity.