By: Mayen Etim
KADUNA, North-West Nigeria – The Global Peace Development (GPD), in partnership with ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), have trained 40 people in Kaduna State to promote Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in their respective communities.
The training held on Thursday at the Zaria Local Govt Council Secretariat was funded by STARTFund Network to mitigate health challenges through WASH in the area. The 40 participants were drawn from the three communities of Har-Gwaza, Kasan Killaku, and Chikaji in Sabon-Gari and Zaria Local Government Areas respectively that recently experienced floods.
In her remarks, the GPD state Coordinator, Chat Adamu, welcomed participants to the training and urged them to be attentive to whatever knowledge they would be impacted to enable them step down same to other members in their various communities.
Adamu, who represented the Executive Director of GPD, Ebruke Esike, said the training aimed to provide emergency lifesaving assistance to communities recently affected by floods.
He emphasized the importance of WASH, saying it saves lives in both routine and emergency situations such as what the communities experienced during the recent floods in the state. “Effective WASH encourages protective healthy behavioral practices amongst community habitants and those who experience disaster such as flooding, and windstorm.”
According to the ED, the main objective of water, sanitation and hygiene programmes in disasters is to reduce faeco-oral transmission of disease and exposure to disease-bearing vectors.
He mentioned that consuming or drinking unsafe/contaminated water often result to incidence of water borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, and typhoid which has huge consequence for the community residence like high cost of medication and even death.
He added: “WASH involves the promotion of good hygiene practices, the provision of safe drinking water and the reduction of environmental health risks which allow people to live with good health, dignity, comfort and security.”
Also speaking on the importance of the training, the WASH Coordinator in Sabon-Gari LGA, Bilkisu Umar, said it will promote the health status of the communities and also reduce the occurrence of disease transmission.
According to her, the training will provide better quality of life when the participants step down the awareness in their various communities for better implementation on the negative behaviour for them to change for positive behaviour.
She said the training will also promote hygiene status of the communities by creating healthy communities and thereby reduce the burden of diseases.
Two participants, Shuaibu Abdulhamid and Binta Ado, from Chikaji Community in Sabon-Gari LGA, who spoke to this Reporter separately vowed to transfer all the knowledge acquired at the training to other community members for a better and healthy lifestyle.
Ado noted that one of the bad behaviours is irrational human activities like dumping of trash in gutters, blocking of water ways by building on it. “Some houses in my community are built very close to one other, with no gutters constructed for ease of water passage and when there is even little rainfall this houses will experience floods,” she revealed.
On personal and domestic hygiene, Binta said on her return she’ll advocate for good behaviour among the women, and would charge them to take up the issue of personal hygiene, food and water; and sanitation of their environment serious.
Corroborating Ado, Shuaibu Abdulhamid, said prior to the training he knew nothing about how to tackle health challenges through WASH. However, after the floods incident and the training, Abdulhamid said he has learnt a lot and would champion the call for a good behaviour to enable everyone in his community live a healthy lifestyle.