Among others, Pharm Chukwumezie PhD Okolo is public health and water expert and the president, Rite Place Health (RPH), a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that advocates for water quality in Nigeria and Africa in general. In this piece with Ekuson Nw’Ogbunka, he among others, speaks on the need to curtail to the barest minimum, water born diseases, NTDs, maternal and child health issues, predominant in Nigeria and Africa in general. Excerpts.
Having been using your NGO to advocate for quality water in Nigeria and Africa in general, using the theme: Beyond Access, Quality Matters (BAQM), can you explain?
On the theme, BAQM, we all know that the quality of water we drink in Nigeria, cannot always be guaranteed, apparently because standards are not maintained by all in the space. Over the years emphasis has been on access to water. Sometimes quality is assumed in that discussion around access. But we also know that access to water is a function of quantity produced, distributed and or utilized. So far, the discussions on Access have not necessarily included quality metrics, and assuming that access guaranteed quality will be a fallacy.
Intentional about it, we chose to take the conversation BAQM, because without Quality, Access to Water leads to Waterborne Diseases: cholera, diarrhea, typhoid, etc. By deliberately and intentionally checking for and demanding quality measures, we rule out assumptions and then we are more objective about quality assessment within the water production, distribution and consumption channels.There can’t be a neglected tropical disease without a neglected tropical people. Most neglected tropical diseases are waterborne, water related, or water associated.
Each time we talk about diseases, we must think about humanity, our neighbors, our families, our loved ones. NTDs refer to our own neglected African people, who didn’t choose, yet were born just like we were, in tropical Africa. Unlike the rest of us, they live and deal with diseases they did not choose and diseases they do not want, and which they cannot overcome by themselves. Nobody chooses to live with a disease he can eliminate, given the resources available to him within his environment. NTDs remind us that some of our people are neglected, especially the poor, even in their disease states. That is a form of inequity, we can no longer neglect our own.
What is the way forward?
Primary Health Care (PHC) is the first evel of care and the first port of call for healthcare in the community to provide public health services. They are saddled with the responsibility of healthcare with respect to improve, protect, prevent cure and rehabilitate and palliative services within the community they are meant to serve, addressing their needs and helping them live normal and heathy lives. To guarantee better health outcomes in the PHC, water is a critical factor. Again, the quality of water needed to carry out primary healthcare services has to be guaranteed to avoid all manner of (nosocomia) infections.
Our PHC centers across the country do not have access to water, let alone
clean water. We have been talking about access, yet staff fetch water from their homes to go to work in PHC. This is where our children’s vaccinations are given, antenatal services are provided and babies born, all manner of perinatal health activities happen. PHC is where we all should go for routine health checks. The reason why perinatal complications, infections and deaths are on the increase, is because they don’t have water. And I am not surprised that infant and under- five mortalities are worst in Africa.
Can you throw more lights about this NGO of yours?
Provision of clean quality water can strengthen that health system and make it more functional and more effective in the discharge of dues (RPHI) is an NGO on a mission to address the aforementioned public health problems. Our vision is very clear: Africa where nobody suffers from waterborne diseases, neglected tropical diseases and where primary healthcare has clean water to deliver in its mandates to the people. Our strategy is captured in our mission. We consider clean quality water a fundamental human right. To ask for all of Africa to have access to clean quality drinking water is not asking for too much. To advocate for primary health centers to have clean quality water is basic and shouldn’t be seen as daring if indeed we care about humanity. To call on our people, philanthropists, our politicians, governments and development partners to prioritize water quality in their budgets is asking for the obvious. And that is exactly what we ask at RHPI.
Don’t you think water related diseases aren’t rampant, like other diseases in Nigeria and Africa?
People die daily from all manner of water related diseases and illnesses, both communicable and noncommunicable diseases, especially women and children. The infant mortality and under – five mortality statistics from Africa are shameful and the undocumented and unreported statistics from all causes are also high. No thanks to dirty drinking water and unhygienic environments. We will intensify efforts to collect data that will reveal true statistics on latent water related mortalities and morbidities but our hypothesis is that the statistics will be worse than what has been reported so far. The problems associated with water quality in Africa are enormous and the efforts to address and to continuously enforce quality in water distribution in Africa seem not to match the tendency to disregard standards among those who produce, package and distribute unhygienic drinking water especially in the rural communities.
BAQM calls our attention to this public health emergency. It pulls together
public, private sectors researchers and academicians, financial institutions, humanitarian services, environmental services and water engineers and the general public to the discussion table.
Water is everybody’s daily food, and it has no religious or ethnic bias, so we believe water quality should be
everybody’s business.
Any message to both the government and the governed?
A subject which affects the life and well-being of everybody should be the central concern of everybody.
Two significant things will happen at the end of the conference: the inauguration of our volunteers (Beyond Access Ambassadors) and the birth of our magazine (Beyond Access Quarterly). These simultaneous developments are key to the overall success of the initiative beyond the conference. While the Ambassadors wil be our grassroots representatives identifying and reporting incubators and distributors of waterborne
diseases in the communities as well as identifying cases of waterborne diseases at the ocal level that would otherwise go unnoticed and unreported; the Quarterly magazine wil be our publication to showcase what bad and good ook like, what we are doing in the field to address concerns with waterborne diseases and neglected
tropical diseases as wel as interventions aimed at providing water to PHCs. These interventions will be supervised and monitored by the ambassadors in collaboration with host communities because ownership is key to sustainability. We believe that this PPP agenda will help in the fight against waterborne diseases. No agency aone can deliver the results we need given lean manpower and budgets.
Our ambassadors wil be our foot soldiers representing us far and wide, they will help drive the message of quality to the grassroots, and identify communities and PHCs in dire need of clean water. They need not be healthcare workers. This conference calls for partnership/sponsorship from local and international players to help us achieve our goals. We desire to champion the provision of clean quality water to at least one PHC center in every LGA over the next few years to serve both the PHC and the community. Please consider partnering with RPHI, even as an individua. This endeavor is a child of necessity. There is work to be done. A resilient people, we can do the work if we choose to.
Prestigious Humanitarian Awards wil be given to certain participants in recognition of what they have done within the humanitarian space and more importantly, an invitation to stand firmly and join hands with RPH in this service to humanity. We ask of all awardees to become super ambassadors and vanguards of water quality within their communities. Our hearts and hands are open to work with everyone to make this happen. We believe that waterborne diseases can be eradicated in Africa but we must all join hands to make it
happen.
