THE SHAME OF OPEN DEFECATION

The provision of water and toilets will ensure a healthier environment

Many of the times when Nigeria hits the international headlines, the piece of news is often depressing. What has inspired the latest round is the shameful revelation that some 34 million people in the country use the open fields, forests and bushes and bodies of water as convenience. But the cost of this unhealthy living condition - of lack of access to toilets - is expensive. Lack of toilets and inadequate sanitation have been linked to some health challenges afflicting the nation, many of them fatal, particularly to children.

According to the joint UNICEF and the World Health Organisation report, lack of toilets remains one of the leading causes of illness and death among children. The report said that diarrhea, a disease often associated with poor sanitary condition, and respiratory infections resulting from poor hygiene, kills about 400,000 children, under the age of five, annually. “These are largely preventable with improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene,” said Goffrey Njoku, spokesman of UNICEF in Nigeria. In a related report, both organisations also ranked Nigeria only ahead of China and India on the list of countries without access to potable water and where 20 per cent of our population indulged in the shameful practice of open defecation. This latest report is evident that the country has not made any progress. Indeed, the figure is suggestive that more Nigerians now use the outdoors as convenience.

The UNICEF report was amplified by Dr. Michael Ojo, Country Representative of WaterAid to Nigeria, who said every seven women out of 10 have no access to a safe toilets, and more than 50 million Nigeria women and girls lacked safe and adequate sanitation, while 17 million do not have access to toilets at all. “Every year, over 85000 mothers in Nigeria lose a child to diarrhoeal diseases caused by lack of adequate sanitation and clean water,” said Ojo. “Women and girls living in Nigeria without toilet facilities spend 3.1 billion hours each year finding a place to go to the toilet in the open.”

Even if we are not sure of the hours, it is obvious that sanitation is a major public health challenge in the country. The evidence is everywhere. The country is one huge field, where people defecate, without shame, and without putting into consideration the impact of their action on the health of others. In many rural communities, people still build houses without provision for toilets, or as the case may be, latrines, where waste can be emptied without others coming in contact with it. In the urban centres, such cases are all pervasive. In many of our so-called modern cities, people use the outdoors as bathrooms and toilets. Many walkways and nearby bushes reek of urine and decaying faecal matters. Some of university communities spread intense odour as many students, in the absence of clean toilets in the hostels, use any available space as convenience. And experts have consistently warned that when large numbers of people are defecating outdoors, it’s extremely difficult to avoid ingesting human waste, either because it has contaminated the food or water supplies or because it has been spread by flies and dust.

But as Ban Ki –moon, the United Nations secretary general once declared, sanitation is “a vital tool for improving the lives of millions of the poorest people.” Indeed, potable water and improved sanitation services are verifiable measures for fighting poverty and diseases. Perhaps, that is why it was an essential part of the Millenniun Development Goals.

We therefore call on governments, at every level, to invest more in this “cheap” commodity by providing public toilets, and even more, by creating awareness on while people should use the toilet. It will be worth it, because it will save lives.

POTABLE WATER AND IMPROVED SANITATION SERVICES ARE VERIFIABLE MEASURES FOR FIGHTING POVERTY AND DISEASES