Diarrhea outbreak
•Kaduna school authorities should know that fecal matter near a well is a serious matter
Diarrhea outbreak at the Government Girls Secondary School, Kawo, Kaduna State, was a sad reflection of the state of the school as well as the state of thinking on education by the authorities.
Chief Medical Director, General Hospital, Kawo, Dr Oyelami Akintunde, was quoted as saying: ”They brought 42 on Monday morning and another 15 that same Monday night. They also brought six on Tuesday morning, totalling 63. All of them have recovered and have been discharged.” It is not clear whether more students were affected and needed treatment beyond the days mentioned by the health official.
Sadly, a student died. Investigations showed that the outbreak was caused by food and water contamination. Deputy Director, Disease Control Centre, Ibrahim Suleiman, said: There is a lot of contamination around the water source the students are using, which may be a serious contributory factor.”
Contaminated food or water can transmit bacteria and parasites to the body, which can cause diarrhea. Reported conditions at the school are shocking and it is no surprise that there were many cases of diarrhea and vomiting among the students on June 4. In particular, the sources of water for the schoolgirls are a well and a borehole, both of which supply unsafe water.
A report said human faeces “were seen a few metres from the well,” with indications that water from the well was likely to have been contaminated by fecal matter. The borehole tank was said to be rusty, producing brownish water.
An SS 1 student gave a striking insight into the health-threatening conditions at the school: “All of us are at risk of one disease or the other. Because even the food they serve us is cooked with either the well or the borehole water. And when they serve us, they don’t serve us water. So, if you cannot afford ‘pure water’ (sachet water), you have no other option than to drink from either the well or the equally contaminated borehole.”
Open defecation around the well was attributed to a lack of functional toilets for the students. It was said that the available toilets lacked water, prompting the students to “defecate anywhere they can find.”
It is ironic that the diarrhea outbreak happened at a time when the state government was reportedly making efforts to improve the educational sector. The state government had reportedly focused on boarding schools, but it has been accused of being selective. Is this why things are the way they are at the affected school?
It is likely that the students and their parents now live in fear of a possible recurrence of the diarrhea outbreak. The conditions that fuel such fear need to be addressed by the authorities as a matter of urgency. The school’s sanitation system should be reviewed and improved without delay.
A similar outbreak occurred at Queen’s College, Lagos, last year, when over 1,222 students were reportedly treated for abdominal pain, fever, vomiting and diarrhea. Some students died. A probe revealed that the boreholes that provided water for the school were too shallow and too close to the sewage system, which caused water contamination that triggered diarrhea outbreak.
From the look of things, what happened in Kawo shows that education authorities did not learn lessons from the Lagos incident. Now that it has happened again, the latest diarrhea outbreak in a school demands that the relevant authorities should place a premium on sanitation in schools across the country.
It goes without saying that learning under unsanitary conditions is counterproductive. It is a shame that hygiene was an issue in the Kawo incident. Preventing a recurrence is a must.