SciDev.Net

This article couldn't have come at a better time. The balance of health gaps are what environmental care can prevent. Indeed the environment was never a big issue to the world for a long time. and even now, the developing world is only waking up to that reality, with many policy makers, researchers and academics still living in the past. This is why the concept of environmental health is least understood even by the practitioners themselves. Thus even though environmental health has traditionally been offered as a course e.g. in the Kenyan Medical training colleges (MTCs), these profesionals have been trained, to date, in close proximity to hospitals, and then when employed , curiously as public health officers, they fall under the hospitals. Thus many feel their role lie inside hospitals. However, their role is supposed to be outside the hospital quarters, trained to be able to understand and prevent factors which pre-dispose the population to health conditions which lead them to hospitals. They are therefore supposed to be monitoring water, air, food and soil quality, together with occupational environments to proactively prevent occurence of disease from these realms. Hope this concept is shared with many others even though it confuses many colleagues in the envoironmental health sector. Dr Afullo Augustine (PhD) Lecturer in Environmental health, kenyatta University, kenya. afullochilo@yahoo.com.sg