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By Modupe George
In a bid to complement government’s effort on education in Oyo State, the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET), a non-profit organisation, has officially launched a Get One Health School Project (GHSP) at Loyola College, Ibadan, to educate students of the school on the concept of One Health.
The project manager of GET, Mrs Ifeoluwa Alabi, while speaking at the inauguration of ambassadors of GHSP at the school on Tuesday last week, said the initiative was the resolve of the organisation to bring home in a more simple way the message of One Health to the younger generation who they said are the leaders of tomorrow.
According to her, the Get One Health School Project is a student-focused project initiated by GET to introduce the concept of One Health to students in various secondary schools in Africa through communication, coordination and collaboration, adding that “this is a global project, but we are starting in Nigeria.”
One Health is about the relationship between the human, animal and plants living together in a shared environment.
Alabi said that GET had decided to pilot the project in Oyo State, stating that subsequently it would be extended to Lagos and Ogun states before the first quarter of the year.
She added that the project is running currently in four schools in Oyo State namely Oluyole Community School, Qiblah High School, Loyola High School, and St. Catherine College.
“We want to reach as many schools as possible, but basically the public schools are our main target,” she said.
Inaugurating the total of 30 students as the One Health ambassadors and some set of teachers as their mentors in the school, the project manager said that “the plan is to equip the ambassadors to serve as our representatives in the school.
“We are also using this project to put the student-ambassadors in a leadership position to impart the knowledge they had acquired from the specially produced One Health textbook being distributed free of charge to them among their classmates and even on their respective families.”
She solicited the support of the school management in encouraging what the organisation is doing in introducing One Health knowledge among the students.
“We are leveraging the teachers to serve as mentors to the ambassadors. We believe that the teachers are always on ground with the students and they can be easily approached whenever they have questions to ask from the book. “We are building the capacity of the mentors under our community project ownership scheme,” Alabi said.
Appreciating the state’s Ministry of Education for its support in evaluating the project to ensure its credibility on why should it be allowed to spread in public schools in the state, she said, “Our main goal is to inculcate the One Health concept into the curriculum of the schools in the state; organise capacity-building for students on One Health-related fields, develop One Health library for schools, and educate the students on career opportunities on the concept, among other opportunities.
She stated that the One Health textbook produced by the GET would in no small measure broaden the knowledge of the young learners, expressing the hope that the state government would someday approve it for schools, even at a subsidised rate.
In his response, the principal of the school, Mr Akinlayo Akinade, represented by one of the vice principals of the school, Mr Olufemi Moradeyo, appreciated the organisation and the GHSP team for choosing Loyola College as one of the pilot schools.
He assured that by the time the team wiould be coming back to visit the school, the entire students would have been well-groomed on the concept of One Health.
Responding on behalf of the 30 ambassadors, the head boy appreciated the GHSP team for the free textbook and for making them beneficiaries of the great project.
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