1m Ogun indigenes defecate in open places, says expert

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NIGERIA: NO fewer than one million residents of Ogun State still engage in open defecation, an expert in Public Health has said.

Such attitude, according to Olusola Afuape of the Department of Public Health, Ogun State Ministry of Health, has become a major source of Hepatitis disease in the state.

Afuape made this known in Abeokuta at the opening ceremony of a one day health seminar organised by the National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria (NACHPN) Ogun State Chapter.

In his lecture, Afuape, who explained that the figure represents 28.8 percent of 3,751,140 of the total population, lamented that unfortunately the figure keep rising daily.

According to him, the development is worrisome and calls for serious concern because of its public health implications.

He said: “Approximately, 1,080,328 resident of Ogun State practice open defecation, especially in the rural areas.  This figure represent 28.8% of 3,751,140 the population.

“Unfortunately this figure keeps increasing day by day. Year in year out, this calls for serious concern because of its public health implications.”

Afuape, who is a field officer and a member of state onchocerciasis control team in the Ministry of Health, further explained that open defecation contributes to the deadly disease, Hepatisis, and that the practice contributed to the highest number of deaths of children under the ages of five.

“As well as high levels of malnourishment leading to stunted growth in children and high level of poverty,” he said.

The health officer identified the roles of stakeholders in controlling and eliminating open defecation with the political will, domestication and enforcement of sanitation laws, awareness campaigning on health implications.

Other roles, he further identified, are enlightenment on environmental behavioural change, sanitation solution that offer a better value than open defecation, construction of more toilets in public places such as markets, motor parks, schools and more focus and attention to water supply.

The state Chairman of the NACHPN, Donnish Oriola, had earlier emphasised the need to update knowledge of members and method to achieve this include capacity building, training and retraining, adding further that as a community health practitioners they have to move with trend of time.

Oriola said: “As community health practitioners, it is our responsibility to contribute our quota in reducing childhood killer diseases to the barest minimum in the state, through health education on good and adequate nutrition to the mothers and caregiver.”

He told members to, at every time, see themselves as agent of change, while stating that community health practitioners of nowadays are quite different to the community health practitioners of yesteryears.