Grace is jolted from her much-desired sleep by the cry of her four-year-old son. She dashes to where he had been laid to sleep after spending the entire night visiting the toilet, stooling.
James, Daniel’s father, returns from work tired, head banging from needless honking by impatient drivers rushing home after the day’s work. He meets his wife wiping sweat from his little son’s face and was informed that the boy hadn’t stopped stooling since he ate bread in the morning.
Daniel’s discomfort doesn’t end within the rough walls of their rented house’s public toilet, he has been feeling severe pain from abdominal cramps too.
“What have you given him?” James asks, and his question is met with his wife’s response of “I don’t know, I have given him palm oil and paracetamol.”
It is 11:17 pm. The worried parents agree to call a family nurse first thing in the morning.
By morning, Daniel’s condition has worsened. There is now a trace of blood in his watery stool. The jittery parents call the Nurse. “Ha, it must be diarrhea,” Nurse Yinka screams. “You have to get him to the hospital now!”
The importance of good health can’t be overstated, particularly considering the below par healthcare system being run by the Nigerian government. And courtesy of unhygienic environments in many areas across the country, hundreds of millions of Nigerians continue to find themselves at the mercy of communicable, life-threatening diseases.
Despite being very aware of the government’s shortcomings in providing standard healthcare system, many Nigerians go about daily without paying attention to some of the things that could keep them and their families out of the four walls of the hospital.
Many others ignorantly engage in unhygienic activities that put others at risk, such as open defecation. Those persons also refuse to properly clean up after doing their business. Worse still, they then go about touching, shaking and giving others food items with their unwashed hands.
In Nigeria the prevalence rate of diarrhea is 18.8%, accounting for an estimated 150,000 deaths yearly amongst children under five due to poor hygienic and sanitary practices, UNICEF report stated.
But simple hygienic habits, such as hand washing with soap, are enough to reduce the risk of being infected by bacterial diseases. In fact, proper hand washing with soap combined with the use of clean drinking water is estimated to reduce diarrheal diseases by up to 48 percent.
Thorough hand washing with antiseptic soaps while carrying out domestic chores around the house, before dishing food, after visiting the toilet, after returning home from work or after coming in contact with a sick person, are effective ways to prevent getting infected.
It is high time Nigerians pay attention to their health by imbibing the culture of hygienic practices during their everyday activities.
Taefeek Bankole,
Abuja.
