Scaling up hygienic practices for our good

Basic hygienic practices that can guarantee people’s health, these are not expensive but within all our means which the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) preaches at all its functions. But these hygiene practices are often ignored and the results are grave.UNICEF recently held a workshop in Enugu in collaboration with WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) […]

Basic hygienic practices that can guarantee people’s health, these are not expensive but within all our means which the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) preaches at all its functions. But these hygiene practices are often ignored and the results are grave.
UNICEF recently held a workshop in Enugu in collaboration with WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) to emphasize the importance of scaling up these hygienic practices which include making water accessible and available, ensuring sanitation practices are upheld while encouraging people to imbibe healthy practices.
Job Ominyi, a WASH specialist speaking on hygienic promotion; optimizing the gains of investments in water and sanitation services said that hygiene is the practice of keeping oneself and one’s surrounding clean, in order to prevent  illnesses or the spread of illnesses.
Ominyi added that these unhygienic habit drives cases of diarrhea, with an  estimated 1.8 million people dying each year 90% of them children under  five; this he stressed is equivalent to a jumbo jet crash every half an hour.
“Four billion cases of illnesses are recorded annually resulting in school absenteeism, lost work days, etc, while inadequate Water, Sanitation & Hygiene contribute to 88% of the cases.
“One-third of people in the developing world carry intestinal worms with 200 million infected by schistosomiasis,” he said.
Another of the WASH specialists, Saaondo Anom giving a presentation on sanitation; community led total sanitation in Nigeria lamented that 113  million Nigerians (70.6%) lack access to improved sanitation so defecate in the open.
He explained that these unfortunate people are harming themselves because their feaces go into the environment and are consumed by the same people and innocent bystanders resulting in different degree of illnesses.
According to him a single gram of human faeces contains as much as 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs. When ingested, it can therefore lead to typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, polio, pneumonia, fatal worm infestation, trachoma, stunted physical development and impaired cognitive function.
This makes open defecation a leading cause of diarrheal death.
However the country is presently faced with bigger problems ;the Ebola virus disease which can be avoided if people imbibe healthy practice, keep away from people who are ill from Ebola and desist from eating animals like bats or monkeys that may be infected by the virus.
The Minister of Health, Professor Christian Onyebuchi Chukwu, while speaking on Ebola, has asked people to be on alert and avoid eating bush meat especially since the virus has been confirmed in Lagos.
The Ebola virus disease spreads fast if one gets into contact with a person already infected with the virus especially if the person has started showing the symptoms of the virus: diarrhea, vomiting, fever, bleeding from the body, body pains, coughing and other symptoms quite similar to malaria.
Chukwu at a briefing revealed that the virus has already claimed two lives in Nigeria, the index case of Patrick Sawyer and the matron who attended to him.
As at last week the cases had risen from seven confirmed cases to nine while others in surveillance had also risen from 69 to about 139 persons.
This recent development only emphasizes the importance of hygiene, having water and ensuring that the environment is clean especially with the outbreak the country is facing.
Anom the WASH specialist had this to say, “The WASH sector is not on any political or national or state agenda, and the lack of strategic sector investment plans results in huge financing gaps”.
According to him investments are not keeping up with rural-urban migration and natural population growth, thereby making operation and maintenance regimes poor, monitoring and evaluation systems are weak.
With President Goodluck Jonathan approving the immediate release of N1.9 billion to implement a special intervention plan aimed at curtailing further spread of Ebola, which he said its control and containment has become a national emergency, the question is how would the fund be used.
“Unfortunately water allocation in states is 7% and at the end of the day only 3% is disbursed to states, while the allocation for sanitation is 1.56%, and the disbursement rate only 0.6%.
With about 113 million Nigerians defecating in the open, and 63 million Nigerians lacking access to sanitation, this could constitute a health programme to the country especially as the present Ebola virus disease is spread through fluids from human.
UNICEF in collaboration with WASH had began the community led total sanitation to assist communities imbibe healthy living habits, like desist from polluting the environment and spreading diseases.
According to the result only 16,558 CLTS communities in Nigeria exist in Nigeria despite the enormous advantage of having a clean environment.
Anom added that only 8,811 communities claimed ODF (Open Defecation Free) with 3,180 ODF communities.
He said, “Hundreds of thousands of latrines are built and used at households, but what is most endearing is that the innovation are by the communities themselves who have seen the benefits of having clean environments.
“Water and sanitation is still being bedeviled by challenges, with the Ebola virus without any vaccine or cure, and the only way out is to treat early if any of the said symptoms is noticed in a person while imbibing healthy practice to avoid the spread, everyone needs to be on red alert.”
Anom has this to say about the country’s sanitation projects “The strategy is driven mostly by donor funding, with poor government funding – very few states are scaling up CLTS despite success but worst is the inadequate follow-up and monitoring poor documentation, record keeping.”
With an emergency fund being released the areas that should be highly encouraged in personal hygiene, and avoidance of person that seem ill, but in peril times of this nature, washing of hands and desisting from open defecation would go a long way in preventing further spread of illnesses.