The death of students due to poor sanitation raises questions about schools’ effective supervision
Following the recent death, in questionable circumstances, of two students at Queens College, Lagos, the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, immediately directed some relevant authorities to ascertain the cause, inspect the school environment (including the kitchen), examine the source of water supply and test its suitability for human consumption. While the outcome of that investigation has not been made public, it is already established that there was a challenge of hygiene that led to the tragic death of the school girls.
Last week, the Lagos State Government directed that the school be shut down indefinitely for a proper treatment of its water system that was “polluted”. According to the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, health records from the school’s sickbay indicated that a total of 1,222 students presented themselves at the clinic on account of abdominal pain, fever, vomiting and diarrhea. He noted that 16 of the students were admitted in various hospitals while two eventually died. But it would take the interventions of other critical stakeholders, including the Unity Schools Old Students Associations (USOSA) before the management of Queens College could suspend its resumption plan.
Unfortunately, what we have is not an isolated incident but a national public health challenge that must be quickly addressed. The death at Queens College attracted so much attention. But at about the same period, there was a similar incident in Government Secondary School, Fannah in Suru Local Government Area of Kebbi State where four students died following an outbreak of gastroenteritis, also known as infectious diarrhea.
Seven other students from the school, according to media reports, were hospitalised at Kamba General Hospital in Dandi Local Government Area while the governor, Alhaji Abuabakar Atiku Bagudu led a delegation, which included the Speaker of the State House of Assembly to visit them. Yet there are sundry reports of similar cases in boarding schools across the country.
According to the United Nations Education Fund (UNICEF) an estimated 124,000 children under the age of five die every year in our country because of diarrhea, mainly due to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene. “Lack of adequate water and sanitation are also major causes of other diseases, including respiratory infection and under-nutrition,”it said. To compound the problem, many schools in Nigeria lacked safe, private toilets and hand-washing facilities. This has been proved to affect enrolment and performance, particularly in the case of girls.
The import of this is that the issue of hygiene in schools is a national problem that has to be dealt with in a holistic manner. It does not help that whenever there is a problem, many of the authorities in these schools are usually defensive instead of looking for solution. In the case of Queens College, for instance, the school authorities were more concerned about the image of the institution than addressing the public health challenge that claimed the lives of two students and threatened that of many others. The report from the Old Girls Association was indeed very telling as it revealed several distressing issues that tended towards criminal negligence.
What is particularly worrisome is that at a time many of the 36 states are involved in one form of “school feeding” or another, many of which are being used to scam away scarce resources, there is a telling absence of any credible intervention by their ministries of health and education. Yet, except there is vigilance on sanitation, these programmes could become a channel for widespread infection. There is therefore the need for action that would involve all the stakeholders in government as well as the private sector, including those with specialised skills in public health.
The authorities in the schools need to constantly ensure of safe water and sanitation for the children in their custody and they must leave their doors open for spot checks on their extent of hygiene. Prevention, as the old saying goes, is always better than cure.