Diarrhoea outbreak kills one pupil in Kaduna State
One of the key messages of health education is hygienic practices. These practices include simple instructions of hand washing, regular bathing, brush your teeth regularly, comb your, wash your plate and so on.
To tell you how important these simple but neglected instructions are, the World Health Organisation set out a day as world hand washing day.
Compliance with these instructions will go a long way to prevent us from most Gastrointestinal diseases. Diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, typhoid etc.
These preventable but ignored cases had claimed many lives and yet,we never embraced behavioural change(s).
An outbreak of diarrhoea had killed a pupil of Government Girl’s Secondary School, Kawo, Kaduna, State over the weekend. Cholera was said to have broken out in the school where about 40 students were said to have been hospitalised.
Jafaru Sani, the honorable Commissioner for education, Science and Technology confirmed the incident.
Members of the Nigerian Red Cross Society and other officials of emergency organizations were at the scene of the incident and they confirmed that the deceased pupil and others become infected with diarrhoea leading to vomiting as a result of unhygienic environment.
Health workers had been deployed to the school for proper management of the situation.
The head teacher and officials of the Ministry of Health had declined to give a comment.
Ibrahim Suleiman, the Deputy Director, Disease Control Centre, said 39 pupils have been hospitalised.
In his word: “there are 39 pupils on hospital admission for diarrhoea and vomiting”. The real cause of the incidence has not been confirmed but most sources of water in the environment has been contaminated which could be an important contributing factor.
Another 89 cases apart from the 39 pupils are been investigated though not related to vomiting and diarrhoea.
The pupils are receiving treatment at the General Hospital in Kawo, Kaduna North.
We must embrace hygienic habits, positive behavioural changes to enjoy optimal health and also, we must ensure we drink potable water void of any form of contamination.
Remember, you only enjoy your wealth is to stay healthy.
diarrhoea is a childhood disease. It has been existence for so long like malaria, but can it be eradicated by prevention only?
The answer is yes, because diarrhoea is often linked with ingesting contaminated foods and water. Therefore, if one could do away with contaminated food and water, there will be little or no cases of diarrhoea.
There should be health education intervention programme for people. This will serve as means of informing them of the causes of diarrhoea, risks of diarrhoea and how to prevent it.
People living at interior villages, whose sources of water might not be potable should be taught how to purify their water.
Above it all, if any symptom of diarrhoea comes up, such an individual should be taken to an hospital.
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