By Ifeoma ikem
The Commissioner for Health Lagos State,Prof. Akin Abayomi, says the state has keyed into the global One Health Initiative to expand its interdisciplinary collaborations and communications in all aspects of health care.
Abayomi said this at the ongoing 3 day 2019 National Organic Agriculture Business Summit going on in Lagos with the theme ‘Organic Export Opportunities for National Development’.
One Health’ is an integrated approach for preventing and mitigating health threats at the Animal-Human-Plant-Environment interfaces with the objective of achieving public health, food and nutrition security, sustainable ecosystems and fair trade facilitation.
What we have done in Lagos state is to establish what is called the `one health’ approach to ensure a coordinated effective way for addressing cross-cutting problems.
You can’t say you are concerned about just the health of human beings because the health of the human being is determined by food you consume, the water they drink and even the air they breathe in.
So it addresses the human health, environmental health and agriculture health (when we talk about agriculture we mean plant and animals’’.
Speaking further he said that we must start to think of health as a holistic approach for the planet.”Problems impacting human health, animals, plants and the environment can be effectively resolved through improved coordination, communication and collaborative actions across disciplines and that these solutions be sustainable.
Lagos is such a crowded place and we want to make sure that it is growing in a healthy way, so we must to avoid any medical emergency.With rapid population growth, globalization and environmental degradation, health threats have become more complex and solutions cannot be found by one sector alone’’.he said. I’m
He said the state is looking at what is being brought in and how they are preserved.
However, we grow food fast, we grow poultry fast, are there holistic, do they pose more harm than good? if you are supposed to grow a chicken in three or four months and you grow them under 15 days then something is wrong.
We want everything perfect, do you know how long it takes to grow anything perfect, some of the chemicals people use to grow things in Nigeria are banned.
If you go to farms, you see people using these chemicals even without wearing protection, as a matter of fact they are not even aware of the dangers they expose themselves to.
The commissioner said his ministry is working with that of Environment, Agriculture, Environment and Justice to have a `Biosecurity Law’ for a holistic healthy state.
We have to ensure that the environment is healthy and as well the food chain. Also we must move towards prevention rather than cure, give the wellness messages, eliminate stress by decongesting the roads, regulate pollution, ensure that drainages are free and flowing and no illegal dumping of refuse’’.he noted
Dr Olugbenga AdeOluwa, Country Director, Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) Initiative in Nigeria while giving the overview of the summit said there is the need to improve local development for export business in organic agriculture in Nigeria.
Organic agriculture is becoming more popular all over the world and Nigeria is currently among the least organised countries in organic agriculture sector.
So building the capacity of practitioners of strategic stakeholders in the organic agricultural sector of Nigeria is needed to contribute to food security, income generation, employment, systems resilience, among others.
Thus, the annual National Organic Agriculture Business Summit (NOABS) is one of the ways of addressing challenges of organic agriculture development in the country.
He said that some of the objectives of NOABS Initiated by Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) partners in Nigeria are to ensure wide spread of benefits of organic agriculture to all stakeholders of organic agriculture sector in the country.
Provide a national platform for organic agriculture stakeholders in the country and sustaining the drive for sustainable organic agriculture development in the country.
Some of the highlights of the event include presentation of awards to some outstanding stakeholders of organic agriculture initiative.
Some of the recipients include Mrs Ebere Agozie of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) as Media/Advocacy Personality of the Year Award, Ms Olusola Sowemimo, a Lawyer/Farmer and Anambra State Government.