Hand washing
Lagos, Oct. 15, 2015 (NAN) An NGO, Inspired Nurses Network, Afrika, on Thursday decried the poor orientation of many Nigerians toward regular and occasional hand washing.
Lagos, Oct. 15, 2015 (NAN) An NGO, Inspired Nurses Network, Afrika, on Thursday decried the poor orientation of many Nigerians toward regular and occasional hand washing.
The Coordinators of the NGO and professional nurses, Mr Josiah Okesola and Mr Emmanuel Adegoke, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that many Nigerians were no longer imbibing the culture of hand washing.
NAN reports that Global Handwashing Day, celebrated every Oct. 15, is a campaign to motivate and mobilise millions of people around the world to wash their hands with soap against spread of diseases.
The day was created at the annual World Water Week 2008 held in Stockholm from Aug. 17 to Aug. 23 and initiated through Public Private Partnership to promote hand washing.
Okesola said that there was need for more awareness to be created to enable many people to be educated on the need to wash their hands regularly.
He said: ``It will be one year on Oct. 20 when Nigeria was declared Ebola free by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
``But, barely one week after the declaration, people had gone back to their normal routines.
``Hand washing became a thing of the past because people felt they only need to wash their hands during the Ebola scourge.
``We need to change the orientation; the orientation is poor among the people.
``People need to be enlightened that it is not only because of Ebola we wash our hands, but we need to wash for the sake of our health and that of our children.
``We need to create awareness that it should be an everyday thing. It has to be a habit we need to imbibe and inculcate in children.’’
Okesola said that the Federal Government, parents and teachers have roles to play in ensuring that school children imbibe the culture of hand washing.
``Every school should have hand washing stations so that as students come into the school compound, they see it as a routine to wash their hands.
`` Government has a role to play by working on hygiene policies in ensuring that schools inculcate hygiene into their curriculums where it will be taught as a subject.
``So, if parents, teachers and the government can play their roles in ensuring adequate and regular hand washing, Nigeria will be the better for it,’’ he said.
Also speaking, Adegoke said research had shown that half of food-borne diseases was as a result of poor hand hygiene practice.
``Many people still do not wash their hands and that is why we are driving this message of the need to wash hands regularly.
``We want to reduce the number of people who visit hospitals because it is no longer news that hospitals are under-staffed.
``The issue is that we are overworked as a result of inadequate health personnel.
``So, we want to go all out to give people preventive health so that they will not need to come to the hospital,’’ he said. (NAN)
Source: NAN
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