Safe hospitals project

The report, ‘Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Healthcare Facilities: Status in Low and Middle income Countries and Way Forward,” noted on average one woman in every 23 in Nigeria would lose a baby to infection during their lifetime due to unhygienic conditions, compared to one in 7,518 in the United Kingdom.Lack of safe water and […]

The report, ‘Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Healthcare Facilities: Status in Low and Middle income Countries and Way Forward,” noted on average one woman in every 23 in Nigeria would lose a baby to infection during their lifetime due to unhygienic conditions, compared to one in 7,518 in the United Kingdom.
Lack of safe water and sanitation has a devastating effect on the health of children, WHO said in the report released ahead of the 2015 World Water Day last month. It indicated that many babies die in the first month of life because they are born in unhygienic conditions while thousands of newborns die from infections linked to unsafe water in healthcare facilities.
According to the nongovernmental organisation WaterAid, 63.2 million Nigerians do not have access to safe water, and 112 million, that’s about two-thirds of the entire population, lack access to adequate sanitation.
Figures released by the UN children’s organisation Unicef indicate that over 97,000 children die from diarrhoea, rated as the third biggest killer of children under-5 in Africa, while Nigeria accounts for 11 percent of all global under-5 deaths.
This is a worrisome situation because such mortalities can be avoided if there is access to clean drinking water and sanitary environment in the hospitals and clinics at the time of birth. But more than half of the healthcare facilities in the country do not have these amenities, according to WHO.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) noted that lack of potable water, sanitation and hygiene cost sub-Saharan African countries more in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than the entire continent gets in development aid, stunting economic development of many nations.
The UN General Assembly in 2010 adopted a resolution acknowledging the right to safe water and sanitation as “Necessary for the total enjoyment of life.”
Though the federal government has ratified the rights to water and basic sanitation, these are yet to be recognised in legal frameworks like the Constitution; hence they are observed more in the breach than in practice.
Lack of clean and basic hygiene costs time and money; these amenities are essential for a happier, healthier and more prosperous future. Promotion of hygiene is the most cost-effective health intervention, in the opinion of some experts at the World Bank.
Political leaders and health and health-related policymakers should introduce measures to ensure that survival rates and health outcomes are imposed for children by integrating water, sanitation and hygiene and monitor their strict implementation.
But the problem is not that of the government alone to tackle. Communities, corporate organisations and well-to-do individuals can also intervene to improve access to clean water and sanitation across the country to save the lives of children. The country’s water infrastructure has suffered from decades of serious neglect and lack of investment. While rural areas in particular are the worse hit as they face a continuing decline in services, urban dwellers buy from private vendors, whose sources of supply are often suspect.
Government at all levels should also be more proactive by making greater effort to fully implement the National Health Policy, which aims to reduce by two-thirds the under-5 mortality and maternal mortality rates between 1990 and 2015.
The 2014 National Health Act, which provides a framework for the regulation, development and management of the country’s health system, should be applied more vigorously to check the mushrooming of hospitals and clinics as there are many places now operating as such in many parts of the country with the least of facilities and personnel and little or not oversight.