Initiatives heat up fight against germs
Ngo Chingdung noticed the elevated body temperature in her fouryear-old easily.
“He’s fond of always rubbing up against me, as little children often do. But I felt over and over and decided his temperature was not normal,” recalls the firsttime mother in Nyanya district of Abuja.
She took him to hospital, a private hospital whose family physician they had visited previously. The fever was symptom for a bacterial infection.
Someone in the city of Lagos, parents just delivered of a new baby saw through the christening of their baby on the eighth day, as their culture stipulated.
Hours later they were fighting for the child’s life in hospital.
It started with a mild fever, which escalated in a couple of days. It was chalked up to exposure to bacteria. A family friend, a relative—they weren’t sure who, but someone— had touched the newborn with contaminated hands in the heady moment of celebration that had quickly turned into a predicament.
One in 10 children born in Nigeria this year may not make it to their fifth birthday. That’s up from one in five children in earlyto-late 90s.
It is sad progress but children continue to die from basic and easily avoidable diseases.
Pneumonia and diarrhoea combined account for 28 in 100 deaths of children aged under five in Nigeria. Both are easy to contract.
One handshake with a person with poor hygiene is enough to transfer the germs. The germs also reside on surfaces—door knobs, rail of pedestrian bridges, stair rails, the table at your favourite canteen, even the slabs in a banking hall.
Adults aren’t spared, and children are more vulnerable.
The campaign for “clean hands” is heating up and corporate groups are getting behind it, rolling out initiatives to raise awareness about personal hygiene and hand washing.
They are also cranking out hand sanitisers to saturate the market and placing them right under the noses of everyone.
“As a new Mum, I knew the health of my newborn was in my hands. I ensured anyone who wanted to carry my baby used a hand sanitizer,” says concerned mother, Abiola Okanlawon.
“I even had a sign on his car seat saying, ‘before you touch, please wash your hands’.
Now that I have two kids, I ensure I add [antiseptic] to their laundry to kill all germs they come in contact with while playing.”
Dettol is a leading antiseptic brand, and launch the Clean Naija Initiative—an integrated, multilevel campaign to create awareness, educate and drive behavioural change around cleanliness and health.
“Children by nature are prone to infections but we strongly believe with informed sensitization and compliance, the rate of infections in babies and children can be drastically reduced, if not totally erased,” said Cassandra UzoOgbugh, brand manager for purposeful marketing at Reckitt Benckiser, which makes the Dettol antiseptic range.
“This is why the School Hygiene
Programme and the New Mom Program are so important.”
The School Hygiene Programme has reached over seven million children over the last seven years.
The New Moms Programme has reached more than five million pregnant and new mothers to teach hygiene practices through different phases of pregnancy and motherhood.
Public hygiene in Nigeria is still a major issue, with nearly 25 in 100 Nigerians still defecating in the open, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund in 2018.
Last May, the Clean Naija Initiative opened wash stations at Ojuwoye Market in Mushin, Lagos, using its ambassador, Nollywood star Funke Akindele.
It also signed a memorandum of understanding with the federal ministry of water resources to work together to tackle hygiene and sanitation problems in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 to reduce diarrhoea- and malaria-related deaths in Nigeria.
“I think that one of the most dangerous things about illnesses and communicable diseases isn’t just the disease itself or the causing factors, but the ignorance surrounding the vast spread of these diseases,” said Dr Ada Ibekweh, director of African Disaster Rescue Initiative.
“From the common cold to terminal transmitted diseases, we need to make sure that more Community Health Specialists are putting in the work to educate everyone - from the grassroots up - on how to stop and prevent the spread of germs and diseases. Together, we can all make a difference.”