Ms. Miriam Onuoha, President, Global Advocacy for Toilet and Sanitary Standards Initiative, has canvassed for deliberate policies to promote safe hygiene in schools to reduce preventable diseases among the populace.
Onuoha told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday that the school environment was a breeding ground for pathogens (organism promotion diseases) to blossom.
According to her, hygiene promotion matters in school, because young pupils are most vulnerable to the threats caused by unclean water, poor sanitation and hygiene.
“Schools, realistically, help as a meeting point of pathogens spread, large numbers of pupils from different socio-economic background assemble into one place.
“Diarrhoea diseases, intestinal worms and other debilitating parasites affect a lot of school children.
“Such disease burden have a negative effect on growth, nutritional status, physical activities, cognition, concentration and school performance of children between ages five and 14.
“Despite this, globally, more than 50 per cent of schools lack access to a safe water supply and about two thirds of schools have no access to sanitation facilities,“ she said.
Onuoha said schools needed to be empowered to have adequate toilets and constant running water, saying lack of sufficient sanitary infrastructure had been attributed to poor performance of students.
She stressed the need for national policy makers to invest in physical Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) infrastructure in addition to enhancing resources for hygiene promotion.
This, she said would impart positively on life skill based practices on daily basis.
She said hygiene promotion in schools and through schools programme was also important to children because they play in the school environment, around their homes and are prone to diarrhoea.
She said it was a known fact that human excreta were the major carriers of these pathogens, saying with a healthy, safe and protective leaving environment, the lives of school children is ensured.
“The healthy environment also helps children for their cognitive, emotional and social development through nurturing values, hygienic habits, skills and experiences.
“In turn, school children can act as change agents for their family members and the community.
“One of the prerequisite conditions for quality education is the provision of an environment conducive for pupils, so that they enjoy school and achieve the best of their capabilities, “ she said.
She expressed concern on how the government was handling sanitation, pointing out that the nation’s poor handling of sanitation issues was not just restricted to hygiene.
“Without a private toilet, women and girls are vulnerable to violence, intimidation and indignity.
“Women and girls living in Nigeria without toilet facilities spend about 3.1 billion hours each year finding a place to go to toilets in the open.
“Sanitation was the most neglected and off-track of the just concluded Millennium Development Goals with little funding, resources or political will to address the crisis,“ she said.
The programme coordinator said little progress had been recorded towards the agreed target of allocating 0.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product to sanitation.
She said stakeholders must begin to see access to sanitation and water as fundamental human rights, saying that it was possible for everyone to own a toilet and access good hygiene.
She urged community members to take ownership of their hygiene, saying “sanitation starts with the individual before reflecting in the society. “
According to the WHO/UNICEF led Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP 2015), only 29 per cent of Nigeria’s population have access to improved sanitation facilities.