FAO, Government launch environmental health curriculum to improve public health and food safety in Zimbabwe

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Zimbabwe will on Tuesday 5 April 2022, launch the Environmental Health Technicians Curriculum. The new curriculum will help health practitioners to improve public health and food safety skills. The new curriculum which was approved by the Higher Education Examinations Council (HEXCO) and accepted for use by the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC); will improve public health and  food safety knowledge, behaviours, attitudes, and skills of Zimbabwe’s public health officers.

“The review of Environmental Health Technicians curriculum breathes a new life into this training programme as it standardises learning to international best practices and also brings in new practical based modules like Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Management, Monitoring and Evaluation and Meat Hygiene and Meat Inspection. These modules address real issues that Environmental Health Technicians who are our foot soldiers are facing in their profession,” said Victor Nyamandi, the Director of Department of Environmental Health. “Understanding and enacting standardized public health and food safety practices in a global economy is important,” added Nyamandi.

The Environmental Health Technicians Curriculum development is part of the FAO interventions under the European Union (EU) funded project,  “Transforming Zimbabwe’s Animal Health and Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS)/ Food Safety (FS) Systems for the Future” (SAFE). The SAFE project’s overall objective is to transform Zimbabwe’s animal health and food safety systems for improved livestock productivity and food safety to enhance market access.

“The revised curriculum managed to incorporate new approaches in the field, international best practices on food safety and public health and additional concepts that experts in the field felt were lacking in the curriculum they were using,” said Basil Mugweni, FAO, SAFE Project Coordinator. 

The curriculum development was part of SAFE Project’s interventions on strengthening institutional capacity of environmental health practitioners who are the competent authorities for ensuring food safety in the country.

To strengthen the knowledge and skills of participants the SAFE project is supporting programmes for orientation of teaching staff at all the eight (8) colleges in Zimbabwe that train Environmental Health Technicians and also field trainers whose responsibilities have been redefined to engage more with trainees imparting on the job and education training.

“The idea is to align our training programmes to education 5.0 that seeks to equip our cadres with relevant skills and knowledge to contribute to the Government of Zimbabwe’s position to achieve Vision 2030 which aims to propel the country “Towards a Prosperous & Empowered Upper Middle Income Society by 2030’’ said Victor Nyamandi the Director Environmental Health Services.

From the 6 to 8 of April 2022, the SAFE project team will be training Food Inspectors on Risk Analysis and do a test run of the National Food Safety and Port Health Information Management System. This will result in a highly rated and acceptable food safety delivery system that ensures consumer safety and facilitates domestic and international trade benefiting our livestock farmers thereby stimulating increased production and productivity.

FAO is implementing the SAFE project under the EU funded 40 million Euros Zimbabwe Agricultural Growth Programme (ZAGP) which seeks to contribute to the development of a diversified and efficient agriculture sector that promotes inclusive green economic growth in Zimbabwe.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of FAO Regional Office for Africa.