The Abuja Environmental
Protection Board (AEPB) has urged the FCT residents to be more committed in promoting environmental sanitation to prevent communicable diseases.
The Deputy Director, Environmental Health Department of the board, Mr Simeon Ajueyisti, told the Newsmen Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, that the commitment would strengthen environmental sanitation in the FCT.
Ajueyisti said that residents should be properly informed and must be committed on how to keep their environment clean and healthy.
He attributed the outbreak of the Lassa fever disease to poor sanitation, adding that it was similar to Ebola disease.
“It is important we get FCT residents informed, poor sanitation has contributed to what we are passing through today.
“I believe strongly that there is need for us to come back to those old days where sanitation is given priority in order to prevent environmental related diseases.
“The present administration and other stakeholders need to look into how to improve environmental sanitation because it is a key to the health of a nation.
“We can restore the structures that are involved, empower and then make them work.
“It is not just having such structures and keeping them, but making them work effectively,’’ he said.
He noted that the disease could be contracted through eating of contaminated food, exposure of open cuts or sores, and contact with an infected person.
Ajueyisti also said that exposure to virus in the blood, tissues, secretions or excretions of an infected individual and rodents were causes of the disease.
He urged residents to endeavour to promote good hygiene, avoid rat contact, infected human beings and improve in the environmental cleanliness.
The deputy director advised the environmental health officers to ensure that there was a synergy among them, adding that such would promote environmental sanitation in the FCT.
According to him, I look forward to a day where all the environmental officers can put themselves together under one umbrella to strengthen the profession.
“ Situations whereby environmental health officers are sent to do different schedules that are not related to their profession are not good.
“Some people are complaining that they do not see health officers around; it is because some of our people are being given such schedule that has nothing to do with our profession.
“Those schedule do not allow them to wear their uniforms and when they move without wearing uniforms, people will not identify them, such is not good for our profession,’’ he said.