Emeka Jilly Ejiowhor
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH NUISANCE WATER SUPPLY
Water is a major component in the structure of human environment. It supports and preserves life but can also damage and destroy life, when it is consumed in a contaminated state. Water can be contaminated in various ways through different sources but the most dangerous source of contamination is human waste originating from diseased individuals or people mainly infected with severe intestinal diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, hepatitis, schistosomiasis and from unhealthy practices.
Access to reliable safe water supply is a human right as defined in the general comment on the right to water and declaration on the right of the child. The access to safe and reliable water contributes greatly to health, thus enabling and encouraging personal hygiene and laundry.
When water supply is endangered, contaminated water transmit disease and lack of adequate water supply can prevent children from observing basic hygienic behaviour to protect the health.
Experience has shown that most schools depend on epileptic water supply and during dry seasons, they depend on traditional contaminated sources. It is common to see school children in the early hours of the day trooping to the traditional sources to collect water for both food preparation and other uses. Another effect on the children is the loss of precious hours for their assignment. Lack of inadequate water supply is also associated with skin diseases such as scabies.
It is common knowledge therefore that reliable and safe water supply in schools will have direct impact on the children’s health and equally provide a model intervention serving as an educational contribution
FOOD SANITATION
Food is one of the most basic needs for human existence. Unfortunately, food often presents risk to health through microbial and other forms of contamination as a result of several human factors principal among which are poor food hygiene and unsafe practice. The habit of food handlers in most schools and colleges, due to ignorance, has great contribution to the increased incidence of food-borne diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhea as well as parasitic infection and poisoning. These usually thrive under certain man-made conditions some of which are improper handling of food and inadequate cooking etc.
Poor food hygiene practices are a major source of infection among school children. Consumption is fragmentally in open containers, thereby exposing them to the possibility of contamination by dust flies and micro-organisms. Such conditions often prevail in day schools. ####
