Nigeria Content Online

Those pictures
you see on international media about generic Africans looking emaciated
and near death from illnesses that should otherwise be easily curable?
We have them aplenty in our country. Daily, while politicians close the
roads of Abuja and the president makes a big deal of dropping the title
‘commander in chief’, children and adults across the country are dying
from illnesses that are easy to prevent.

As if to drive
home this point, the United Nations delivered the news on Monday that
more than , 500 people have died of cholera – spread mostly through
bacteria-contaminated food and water – in our country this year, more
than four times that death toll reported by the government in August.

The reasons for
this are easily the same reasons for the deaths in Zamfara from illegal
mining of gold, the deaths in the Niger Delta from the illegal sale of
petroleum and deaths around the country generally – a dereliction of
duty by our governments; a complete refusal to engage with the issues
that day to day Nigerians struggle to deal with – of trying to find a
way, anyway, to survive.

In this case,
heavy rains and flooding in rural areas already burdened by problems of
access to safe drinking water and sanitary facilities are responsible
for the spread of the disease.

These deaths are
most striking because, as noted, there are more than four times the
number revealed by government (352) only as far back as August,
overwhelmingly in the north.

And they are
scarier because at that time, the health ministry had warned that there
was a risk of a nationwide outbreak. Clearly, not much has been done to
stem the problem since. The minister of health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, wrote
a letter of alert to all the governors of the 36 states on the need for
increased funding to combat the epidemic, but not much came out of
that, apparently.

“The outbreak is
still ongoing and spreading to new geographical areas. Severe flooding
and displacement of large numbers of people have occurred, aggravating
the situation,” a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report says.

According to a
UNICEF spokesperson, Marixie Mercado, “the outbreak is the highest
since 2004. My understanding is that it is peaking right now, even
though efforts are made to contain it. But there are still new cases
from already affected states, mainly in the north and other parts of
the country.”

The WHO makes it
all a bit clearer in its summary on the global outbreak of the disease,
stating that 29,115 cases, including 1,191 deaths, have been reported
between January 4 and October 3 this year, in 144 local government
areas in 15 states.

Now, cholera’s
rapid spread has emerged strongly in the South West. In August, the
Chief Epidemiologist in the Federal Ministry of Health, Henry Akpan,
listed affected states to include Bauchi, Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Kano,
Jigawa, and Taraba. Others are Katsina, Rivers, Ogun, Cross River, and
Osun.

To be sure,
cholera is a global threat and not a uniquely Nigerian problem, but its
occurrence indicates the social development progress of countries. The
disease no longer poses a threat to places with minimum standards of
hygiene, only a scourge for countries where access to safe drinking
water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed – and it is a shame
that Nigeria is on this sorry list even when we have the capacity to
avoid it.

Generally,
citizens can prevent to a reasonable degree the possibility of giving
in to cholera by improving living standards in a number of ways
including washing of hands before eating, proper disposal of excreta
and waste and protecting food from flies and other dangerous conveyers
of bacteria. In the absence of clean water however, citizens can only
do so much.

But these efforts pale in comparison to the responsibility of government. Unfortunately, the case in

Yobe State shows
the priorities of our elected leaders: the governor recently rejected
bus loads of anti-cholera solutions for treatment of patients in 11
council areas of the state despite the fact that his has one of the
highest figures for cholera in the country.

And in the aftermath of the release of the UN summary, this paper’s
reporters tried to reach out to the Federal Ministry of Health for its
reaction. No one was accessible, and 24 hours after there is yet no
official response. While they fiddle, the cholera spreads.