No fewer than 1,080,328 residents of Ogun State, especially rural dwellers, who engage in open defecation, stand the risk of contracting the deadly Hepatitis disease.
The Field Officer of the Department of Public Health in the state Ministry of Health, Olusola Afuape, disclosed this during the opening ceremony of a health seminar organised by the National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria in Abeokuta.
Afuape explained that the figure of those at risk of the incurable and deadly disease represented 28.8 per cent of the 3, 751,140 total population in the state.
He expressed fears that the figure of those susceptible to Hepatitis in the state had been increasing on a daily basis due to lack of concern for its implications for public health.
According to him, the increasing figure calls for serious concern because of its public health implications.
Afuape, who also doubles as a member of the state’s Onchocerciasis Control Team in the Ministry of Health, said that open defecation not only increased the number of deaths of children under the ages of five, but was also responsible for high level of malnutrition, leading to stunted growth among children.
He, however, identified political will, domestication and enforcement of sanitation laws as well as creating awareness on its health implications as some of the measures that could be employed in controlling and eliminating the menace.
The field officer listed other measures as enlightenment on environmental behaviour change, sanitation solution offering better value than open defecation, construction of more toilets in public places such as markets, motor parks, schools and paying more attention to water supply.
The state Chairman of the Community Health Practitioners, Donnish Oriola, noted that members of the association needed to update their knowledge in the area of capacity building, training and retraining in order to reduce the incidences of child killer diseases in the communities.
He said, ”As community health practitioners, it is our responsibility to contribute our quota in reducing childhood killer diseases to the minimum in the state through health education on good and adequate nutrition to the mothers and care givers.”
Oriola also urged the members of the association to see themselves as agents of change, stressing that community health practice had witnessed a lot of changes in modern times.
