You cannot do nothing and expect things to change just by signing an agreement.
12 years from now, 2030 to be specific, Africa will no longer have to deal with cholera outbreaks – at least according to the continent’s health ministers who met last week in Dakar, Senegal and adopted the Regional Framework for the Implementation of the Global Strategy for Cholera Prevention and Control.
While this is a laudable agreement, it is also worthy to note that the current status of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services in several African countries paint a very grim picture of the future of cholera in several African countries including Nigeria.
Even though cholera is an ancient disease that has been eradicated in several countries around the world, it is almost impossible to control and eventually eradicate without institutionalizing hygiene. And this is where many African countries are lagging behind.
Few days after the continent’s health ministers shook hands, signed documents and posed for pictures in Dakar, a joint report was released by UNICEF and WHO that gave some indication regarding the African countries that can actually eradicate cholera within 12 years.
So we took a much closer look at the data used to produce the Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools: Global baseline report 2018. An analysis done by healthnews.africa showed it is only in 6 African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa and Namibia) that safe drinking water is available in more than half of schools.
In the same vein, only 8 African countries have basic sanitation services in more schools.
I was personally curious about the status of Nigeria and I got exposed to an entirely different set of problems the country is uniquely facing – non-availability of records on sanitation and hygiene in schools and elsewhere.
While UNICEF and WHO did not have data on how many schools in Nigeria have drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services, there were estimates on what the country lacks.
Nigeria is one of the African countries where at least half of the schools did not have drinking water for the students. It is also one of the eight countries where over 50% of schools lack basic sanitation services.
I got even more curious about the state and trend of sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria and I started analysing the global data on open defecation.
While the practice is reducing across the world, it is actually on the rise in Nigeria as shown in the data visualization above. Since 2000, open defecation has risen from an act practiced by 22% to 26% of the Nigerian population even though the act has reduced across the world by about 8% and in Sub-Saharan Africa by about 10%.
Algeria is the African country where most schools have drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services. This was reported by healthnews.africa last week. The announcement came at a period when the country was in the middle of a cholera outbreak that started early August. Within a month, the country was able to drastically reduce the number of affected regions to one.
It is also worthy to note that this latest cholera outbreak was the first time that Algeria was dealing with such in 22 years. During the outbreak, there were 62 confirmed cases and 2 deaths.
In Nigeria on the other hand, in the reporting week ending on August 12, 2018 alone, the country recorded 962 suspected cases of cholera out of which 21 were laboratory confirmed and 18 deaths were recorded, according to a report released by the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC).
My argument now is simple. While countries like Algeria can easily meet and surpass global cholera targets for Africa, putting such countries in the same category as Nigeria would not result in the actualization of set goals.
Instead, let us know who is doing great and who is lagging behind. There and then, the stakeholders can recommend well adapted action plan for all scenarios that will deliver results – not inconsequential agreements that do not holistically address the core issues at hand apart from MoUs, pictures and handshakes.