12 / 40
10
M U T
S P I R I T
/ /
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0
COVID-19 incorporated into
MUT’s Environmental Health
curriculum
Left: Anna Bigara, Lecturer in the department, and
Dr Thobile Poswa, HOD
With COVID-19 having much to do with
the environment and how people behave,
MUT’s Department of Environmental
Health has decided to fully incorporate
the topic into its academic programmes.
The curriculum will be more dynamic,
according to Anna Bigara, a lecturer in the
department, and the department may also
focus on strengthening and integrating
the principles of epidemiology and of risk
analysis and management throughout its
various modules.
This is one of the department’s reactions to COVID-19,
a pandemic that is wreaking havoc across the globe.
“In early March 2020, we recognised that the soon-
to-be pandemic would affect our country. In the
Epidemiology (study of diseases) module, I integrated
COVID-19 into the sections on communicable
diseases, outbreak response and infection control,”
said Bigara, adding that they were now going to use
case studies to enhance critical thinking.
She is already applying current interventions such as
the International Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
programme in water quality management. “But now
the emphasis is on how it should be strictly applied
and maintained because these provide an important
additional barrier to COVID-19 transmission and to
the transmission of infectious diseases in general,”
she said.
The department is guided by the World Health
Organisation’s (WHO) definition of environmental
health, which is the science and practice of preventing
human illnesses and injury, promoting well-being by
identifying and evaluating environmental sources and
hazardous agents such as COVID-19 as a biohazard,
and limiting exposures to hazardous biological,
chemical and physical agents in air, water, soil, food
and other environmental media or settings that may
adversely affect human health.
Bigara applauded the government for taking a bold
step to contain the pandemic, and had some advice.
“The nation-wide lockdown was necessary to disrupt
the chain of transmission and prevent the spread
of the virus while the health care system prepared
the hospitals and other related places for possible
COVID-19 cases,” she said. She added that in
hindsight, authorities could have focused earlier on
prevention measures related to cluster infections in
high-risk areas within communities, and particularly
among vulnerable people, as opposed to the initial
approach of identifying cases and tracing the contacts.