As Nigeria continues to fight the surge of cholera outbreak across the country, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has flagged off a national environmental sanitation exercise to enlighten the Nigerians public on the risk of poor hygiene with focus on prevention of contamination of food, water and the entire environment.
Flagging off the 2021 exercise with the theme: Clean Environment/Good Hygiene: Panacea for Good Health and Long Life, NYSC Director General, Brigadier General, Shuaibu Ibrahim, Saturday in Nyanya Abuja, said every community across the country would be mobilised to participate in the exercise.
According to him, environmental sanitation has been recognised globally as one of the key requirements for prevention of diseases and their escalation to epidemic proportion, saying efforts must be stepped up to enlighten the general public.
“The exercise will feature sensitisation, disease surveillance and report of outbreaks. Indeed,the call to action will promote cooperation and reduce indifference and ignorance. A good example is seen to the robust response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with awareness creation, vigilance, and community policing becoming everyone’s business. We can no longer afford to be indifferent to anything that will be detrimental to public health and safety.
“It may interest you to know that during the nationwide medical outreaches recently conducted on the platform of NYSC Health Initiative for Rural Dwellers (HIRD), most of the ailments diagnosed and treated were as a result of poor hygiene. They include chronic diarrhea, dental caries, head and body lice, ringworm, dysentery, typhoid, polio, scablies trachoma, hepatitis A, and malaria amongst others.
“Therefore, efforts must be made to save many more lives by empowering the people with adequate information on good grooming and environmental hygiene. I wish to assure Nigerians that we will not rest on our oars as we continue to offer health and other services, including environmental protection. I am.particularly hopeful about the prospects of this exercise because with regular sanitation, malaria and other related disease will be reduced to the barest minimum,” he said.
Also the NYSC FCT Coordinator, Alhaji Suleiman Abdul, while welcoming the delegates, said findings from the medical outreach, indicated that a greater percentage of ailments recorded were as a result of poor sanitation and hygiene practices.
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