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.”
