Embrace environmental sanitation for public health
Environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected to disease transmission. An effective sanitation system provides barriers between wastes and humans in such a way as to break the disease transmission cycle. This is a public health condition relating to clean drinking water and adequate treatment and disposal of wastes and swage. […]
Environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected to disease transmission.
An effective sanitation system provides barriers between wastes and humans in such a way as to break the disease transmission cycle. This is a public health condition relating to clean drinking water and adequate treatment and disposal of wastes and swage.
In years back, Nigerian observed a national environmental sanitation day on the second and the last Saturday of every month, guided by the Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria. The environmental health officer is one of the health professionals whose creation was based on needs and exigencies rather than desire or sentiments. It is very clear that this campaign is to keep our environment clean which is very helpful and necessary. One had a very good feeling driving or walking through streets at the end of each environmental day, everywhere looked nice and clean, but now the reverse is the case.
Nowadays, in a society or community in about half of the year there is nothing like environmental sanitation exercise, imagine how the society or community would look and the possible effects of that in the community. There are various hazards and negative effects of lack of environmental sanitation on the lives of people in such area. A good sanitation system aims to protect human health by providing a clean environment that would check the spread of diseases. For example, diarrhea, a main cause of stunted growth in children, can be reduced through sanitation. There are many diseases which are transmitted in communities that have low levels of sanitation, such as intestinal worm infection, cholera, hepatitis, polio, schistosomiasis, trachoma, to name just a few.
To every human being I think being healthy is the greatest thing. As an obligation or duty, citizens have a great role to play in environmental sanitation. Think of the environment in your community if everyone goes about throwing empty sachets of “pure” water, bottles of water, sharp objects and refuse everywhere, urinating and defecating in the environment anyhow in just two to three days, how do you think the environment would look like? As good citizen be mindful of how you dispose wastes and harmful objects in your environment and where you urinate or defecate, sweep your compound regularly and dispose of unwanted materials as appropriate to reduce harm within the society. We should learn to maintain the overall purpose of sanitation is to provide a healthy living environment for everyone, protect natural resources from damage (such as surface water, groundwater, soil) and provide safety, security and dignity for people within the environment.
As citizens, we must we not wait for government to sanitize or clean our environment. In my opinion we don’t have to wait because by government’s way of definition we as citizen also have a great role to play in our society, not only on environmental sanitation.
There is an analogy between teaching people to count with the help of counting sticks and reminding people to keep their environment clean through the observation of a National Environmental Sanitation Day on the second and the last Saturdays of every month. Both of them are aimed at habit formation. The one who learns to count without the use of counting sticks in the process begins to count without the use of sticks. There is no report anywhere that one can continue learning to count with sticks for upwards of 10 years. Likewise, with environmental sanitation, lets us start from our bedroom, followed by our compound, by cleaning and sweeping our environments, then gradually as times goes on it will become part of our habit which would be difficult to change.
In my opinion, isn’t it time we started keeping our environment clean without having to be reminded every second and last Saturdays of the month? Yes it is, because delay and procrastination is very dangerous. I believe the time to form this habit is now.
Comfort Anjili is of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri.