USHAFA COMMUNITY AND THE CHOLERA SCOURGE
Like a pack of feral wolves it came again for the unsuspecting and unsecured, and without warning, it cut down five of them, laying bare the bones of the desperately poor hygiene people grapple with. As always, it began with unbridled stooling and vomiting before it veered off into something more terrifying, and just like on countless occasions before it, cholera cut through the Ushafa community of the Federal Capital Territory, leaving in its trail stool, death, and overwhelmed healthcare facilities.
It is no secret that Nigeria`s health care system is poor. It is further no secret that it is ill-equipped to grapple with the many attacks of avoidable diseases and preventable deaths that buffet it. Yet, we always relapse into the same patterns and experience the same pains. In a country where people feel aggrieved enough with the government as to compromise their own hygiene and wellbeing as some form of twisted revenge, anything is possible. The rains are pouring down now and poised to sweep away people and houses into those areas where buildings were erected with vain regard for structural integrity and the waterways have been clogged with thrash. A country that has struggled to manage its resources at the highest levels has also struggled to hold things together at the bottom. Nigerians have an issue with cleaning up after their own mess. It is why things are this bad. A woman who cannot make little sacrifices to properly dispose the litter in her house quickly turns the drainage beside her house to a makeshift refuse dump. When the rains come, there can only be one outcome: flooding.
Then there is the issue of scant sanitary facilities. This is a painful contributor to the needless deaths because at centre of that space darkened by the absence of good sanitary facilities lie one of the deepest wounds of human dignity. Houses are built with no provision for people to relieve themselves. Inevitably, they turn their immediate surroundings to emergency toilets. Even their sources of water are converted to emergency relief spots. Nature then acts on their wastes to produce a terrifying cauldron of wasting sicknesses of which cholera is one. The deaths in Ushafa were entirely preventable. To prevent future deaths people must learn to take care of themselves, placing their wellbeing before the fleeting flavours of ephemeral conveniences.
Life is hard enough in Nigeria, illness should not make it harder. In a country where many deaths have resulted from virulent diseases that good hygiene habits could have strongly combated, every new death from cholera, Lassa fever and their kind is a rasping rebuke of the hygiene practices of a people and a government`s lamentable laxity in issues of environmental sanitation and hygiene. Kene Obiezu, Abuja