Women, Children At Risk In Open Air Defecation

In celebrating this year’s
World Toilet Day (WTD), United Nations General Secretary, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, stated that one out of every three women  around the globe is at risk of potential violence when seeking a place to defecate.
Mr Ban Ki-Moon said,” one out of three women around the world lacks access to safe toilets”.
In line with this lack of access to safe toilet, the theme for this year’s celebration, focuses on “Equity Dignity and the link between Geneder-Based violence and sanitation, seeking to end open defecation and ensuring that women and girls are not at risk due to lack of sanitation”.
In  a  chat with newsmen, the second Vice Chairman, Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria, Dr Edmund Anofuru, asserted that women and children are at risk of assault and disease when they engage in open space defecation.
According to him, there are  lots of diseases that are called Fecal Oral Transmitted Diseases, that is diseases that if some body who has for example polio, passes stool in the open, the virus is found in the stool of another child comes in contact with the stool and ingests it, the child becomes infected with the virus.
“Also, Diarrheal diseases are the number one child killer diseases and the virus that cause these diseases are transmitted through the fecal-oral route, if an infected child passes stool in a not-well-controlled area, vector organisms can carry them and spread them to other children”.
He further said lack of safe toilet cause contamination of water bodies due to defecation into the water bodies and vector organisms spread them to other humans.

Tonye Nria-Dappa

L-R UNODC Country Representative, Ms Mariam Sissoko; Chairman, Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Mr Ahmadu Giade and NAFDAC Director-General, Dr Paul Orhii, presenting the 2014 world drug report in Abuja, recently