If there is one thing Covid 19 taught us, it is that hand washing is essential to ward off and fight off infections. Sadly, however, “globally, around 3 in 10 people – or 2.3 billion – do not have handwashing facilities with water and soap available at home,” according to UNICEF.
The situation is even worse for developing countries like Nigeria where over 6 in 10 people are without access to basic handwashing hygiene.
In commemoration of the 2021 edition of Global Handwashing Day on October 15th, the UNICEF WASH Director, Kelly Ann Naylor noted that “Global response efforts to the pandemic have created an unprecedented time for hand hygiene. Yet progress remains far too slow for the most vulnerable, underserved communities.”
What UNICEF is saying
With the pandemic slowly being contained through global efforts on vaccination, it does appear that people are beginning to take handwashing as a temporary thing that goes away once you are vaccinated. But the UNICEF WASH Director disagrees stating that “Hand hygiene cannot be viewed as a temporary provision to manage COVID-19.
“Further long-term investment in water, sanitation and hygiene can help prevent the next health crisis from coming. It also means fewer people falling ill with respiratory infections, fewer children dying from diarrheal diseases, and more pregnant mothers and newborns protected from preventable conditions like sepsis.”
Although UNICEF’s warning that 3 in 10 people do not have access to handwashing facilities sounds scary with respect to its impact on the fight against infections, it is actually an improvement over what the data was, about six years ago. According to available data, the global population with access to handwashing facilities has improved from 67 to 71 percent since 2015. However, given the mortality rate of Covid-19 and the need to fight it squarely, there is need to ensure that more people have access to handwashing facilities globally. Otherwise, “1.9 billion people will still not have access to basic handwashing facilities” if the current trend is allowed to continue, UNICEF warns.
To drive the severity of the situation home, UNICEF noted that the implication of 3 in 10 people not having access to basic handwashing facilities with water and soap indicates that 2.3 billion people the world over are in that category which includes 670 million people without any facility at all.
Situation in schools
Even in schools, the condition is as dire. According to UNICEF, “2 in 5 schools worldwide do not have basic hygiene services with water and soap.” This means that about 818 million students do not have basic hygiene services with water and soap while 462 million of them attend schools with no facilities at all. The situation is even more deplorable in developing countries like Nigeria where “7 out of 10 schools have no place for children to wash their hands.”
Healthcare facilities are not spared
The situation even gets scarier when viewed against the backdrop that the UNICEF data indicates that 1 in 3 healthcare facilities worldwide does not have hand hygiene facilities at points of care where healthcare workers and treatment result in contact with the patient. That sounds like a recipe for disaster and the reason why some patients go to some healthcare facilities with one infection but come back home with another.
Governments should act fast
It will take the financial muscle of the government to reverse the trend. The UNICEF estimated that “the cost to provide hand hygiene in all homes in 46 of the world’s least-developed countries by 2030 is an estimated US$11 billion.” The UNICEF therefore “urges governments to commit to providing hand hygiene, not as a temporary response to the pandemic, but as an investment in public health and economic resilience.”
What it all boils down to
It is unfortunate that students still defecate in the bush around the schools in Nigeria. It is projects of this nature that Nigerian legislators, senators and house of representative members should spend their constituent allowances on. Although the UNICEF estimated the cost in billions of dollars, it would not cost an arm and a leg to build a water system type of toilet and urinary for primary schools in each local government in Nigeria.
