BY CHIKA OKEKE, Abuja
Dr Yakubu Mohammed Baba
The Environmental Health Council of Nigeria (EHCON) has disclosed that over 80 percent of 200 food and water samples collected in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Environment for laboratory analysis tested positive to cholera.
This is even as the council highlighted that the transmission of cholera is majorly through fecal–oral route, which is through hand to mouth, and contaminated water to food.
Registrar of EHCON, Dr Yakubu Mohammed Baba stated this over the weekend in Abuja while providing update on interventions by the council and ministry on cholera outbreak.
The fecal–oral route describes a particular route of transmission of a disease when fecal matter goes into the mouth through contaminated food or fingers. It can also enter by ingestion of droplets expelled from the throat of an infected person.
Baba lamented that the irony of the disease is that any patient suffering from cholera would be gushing out vomitus through inconsiderable sound.
He noted that the environmental pillar which is key in the management of cholera and prevention is normally handled in different stages.
"The first stage is at the household level intervention which includes making sure that all raw foods is thoroughly washed and that water sources at the homes are clean. You should add a reasonable percentage of chlorine into water sources.
"Where there is an outbreak, you will report such community to the nearest environmental health authority for them to carryout food and water sample. Once the samples are positive, it is the responsibility of Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) to embark on massive chlorination of water sources, both at the households and community level," he added.
News Rider reports that cholera is an acute diarrhoea infection caused by ingestion of unwholesome food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.
It is an extremely virulent disease that takes between 12 hours and five days for the symptoms to manifest. The common early symptoms are frequent watery stool that is usually milky white in colour, nausea and vomiting.
To this end, the registrar directed health facilities to establish isolation centres since cholera is a highly infectious disease.
"As soon as it rampages a community, the first step is that there must be an isolation centre. The isolation centre is managed by the medicals while the EHOs will put in place the necessary preventive measures.
"They will make sure that there is a specialised buckets that collects the vomitus and the water diarrhea stool. The bucket is measured in the level of dehydration of the patient which is reported to the medical doctor to make sure that the necessary fluid will be replaced as the patient is passing the vomitus and diarrhoea," he said.
Baba informed that one of the critical responsibilities of the EHOs in managing cholera patients is to ensure that the diarrhoea and vomitus is disinfected, which is known as concurrent disinfection.
He said: "Once an isolation centre is established, people like to visit their loved ones, knowing that the disease is infectious. Therefore, it is the responsibility of EHOs to establish disinfection points so that as the visitor is leaving the ward, he or she should be disinfected, which is the duty of the isolation centre."
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