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So hopeless is the situation that UNICEF said recently that a state of emergency
had been declared to deal with it. Zaid Jurji, UNICEF’s Chief WASH Specialist,
explained that, after lingering among the top five countries for more than 15
years in the practice of open defecation, Nigeria has now shot into the lead in
Africa and is second only to India globally. In what he perceived as a
misplacement of priorities, Jurji lamented, “One hundred and forty million have
cell phones (in Nigeria); meanwhile only 97 million have access to improved
sanitation.”
This is no doubt another emblem of shame for a country that is so richly blessed
in resources but is dogged by poverty and backwardness; she recently overtook
India as home to the poorest in the world and was declared the worst place for a
child to be born in a study conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit of London
in 2013. Nigeria is also a country with the third highest tuberculosis burden in
the world, after Indonesia and India. Among other dubious distinctions, she is
one of only three countries that still actively transmit polio in the world. No
country should be comfortable being associated with these statistics.
Beyond rhetoric and tokenism, there is the need for a strong response from the
government to reverse this retrograding trend. WASH is a concept designed to
sharpen the focus on the challenge of increasing people’s access to water
sanitation and hygiene. According to UNICEF, WASH is a collective term that
emphasises the interdependence of the three concepts. “For example, without
toilets, water resources become contaminated; without clean water, basic hygiene
practices are not possible,” UNICEF explains.
In Nigeria, many people trek long distances in search of water, which may not
even be suitable for drinking. In the rural areas, many still drink from open
streams, rivers, shallow wells and ponds. For instance, people in Idu community,
within the Federal Capital Territory, share the same source of drinking water
with cows, which exposes them to the possibility of zoonotic disease infections.
Besides, open water sources are also in danger of contamination from pathogens
in faeces whenever it rains.
Apart from the economic loss to both individuals and the country – the latter put
at 455 billion annually – the cost of lack of adequate water and sanitation is felt
in the number of infectious diseases that are contracted, especially by children.
Such diseases include diarrhoea, leading to malnutrition, polio, cholera and
stunting, among others. There is also the problem of loss of dignity and privacy,
especially among women, who are forced to go into the bush to defecate in the
open; they could be sexually assaulted. Everybody that practices open defecation
is exposed to the danger of attack by wild animals, especially snakes.
Copyright PUNCH.