ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH OFFICERS IN DISASTER RESPONSE

"SHOULD DISASTER STRIKE; BE PREPARED. PREPARE THE NIGERIA'S ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICE TODAY TO BETTER RESPOND TO EMERGENCIES"

To address this need, Environmental Health officers Association of Nigeria (EHOAN) must collaborate with other  public health / environmental health partners (both locally and abroad) to develop a sound, up to date comprehensive training program.

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH TRAINING ON EMERGENCY RESPONSE (EHTER ) prepares Environmental health professionals by providing them with the knowledge, skills, and resources to address the environmental health concerns that result from emergencies and disasters.

Environmental health professionals perform many critical functions during emergency response and recovery, such as conducting shelter assessments, testing drinking water supplies, performing food safety inspections, and controlling disease-causing vectors in . 

In many organisations, Environmental health practitioners working there have specifically assigned responsibilities, such as hotels/ restaurant and other regulated premises inspection; water sanitation ; School inspection;  House to house inspection; industrial Hygiene inspection; waste management and wastewater management, etc . 
But during an emergency or disaster, however, EHOs are usually faced with challenges that requires them to address a wide range of environmental health issues (nuisances) as well as performing several other different roles, and even multitasking, including some roles that may be or seem unfamiliar at the time. This calls for regular training and retraining. With constant training, the EHOs will be well prepared and equipped to better respond to manage disaster sites or camps efficiently and effectively too.

Environmental health professionals all over the world play extremely important roles in all-hazards emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. Hence, their regular training and upto-date understanding of how mordern disasters impact on the environment is essential to protecting public health before, during, and after an emergency or disaster including terrorism impacted Environments. The scale and nature of disasters and emergencies are ever dynamic and must be tackled with current trainings, workshops, seminars etc..
It must be pointed out here that the Environmental Health Officers' traditional functions such as safeguarding drinking water supplies, controlling disease-causing vectors, conducting food safety inspections, and ensuring safe and healthy building environments, etc may be very challenging especially after extreme events or disaster.

Hence, the Environmental Health Practitioners must be provided with regular trainings so as to be able to anticipate, recognize, and respond to many issues with upto-date scientific tools and equipment for better result.

Furthermore, Environmental Health Officers in Nigeria  need access to quality guidance, information, and resources that will assist them in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from the adverse impacts of emergencies and disasters. Hence the passionate request for a standard, Wifi (internet) enabled Environmental Health Library that is also equipped with modern training facilities to train and retrain on the EHOs and interns so as to uplift the standard of Environmental Health practice in Nigeria.

Every disaster (whether natural or man made) including terrorism impacted sites provides a variety of disaster related issues/nuisances that are usually grouped according to specific environmental health-related nuisace categories and issues. Because environmental health is a system in which different areas are interconnected, there may be some overlap of functions of other ancillary professionals in these categories.

Inconclusion, It is very imperative to massively involve the Environmental Health Officers in Disaster response/management and also constantly provide the Environmental Health officers with the requisite upto-date training, guidance and information that will help better prepare the Environmental Health professionals in Nigeria, to protect public health and safety in the communities  before, during, and after an emergency or disaster has occurred.