Sanitary Practices and Implications on Off-campus Students Health

Sanitary Practices and Implications on Off-campus Students Health

Chapter One of Sanitary Practices and Implications on Off-campus Students Health

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Most large Nigeria cities are overcrowded, due to urban attraction and developments such as universities, job opportunities, security and so on. Little controlled urban growth leads to poor management of solid and liquid wastes produced by cities. This leads to many problems of sanitation. The sanitation in these cities is generally dominated by self purification works. They often repress wastewater that trickles down in living quarter streets emitting strong foul odours (Strauss, Downing, Rondon, 1994).

Disease related to poor sanitation and water availability cause many people to die of sickness like cholera, diarrhea, typhoid which damages the body tissues. Children are most vulnerable to health hazards and consequently are affected the most. In 1998, 2.2 million people died because of poor sanitation, which the vast majority were children (WHO, 2004).

There has been considerable awareness of water supply in off-campus hostels, but the problems of excreta and waste disposal have received less attention. In some of these hostels, every where is littered with pure water polythene, pieces of paper and so on, without proper disposal (Erijakpor, 2006). In order to focus attention to these to these problems, sanitation exercises should be done daily to keep the environment clean by employing labourers that will keep the hostels clean(Anyaka, 2004). Some of the students in these hostels have poor sanitary and hygienic practices that can cause diseases. Environments should be fumigated in order to kill dangerous animals and rodents like snakes, rats, scorpions etc.

Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households, school hostels (on campus or off-campus) and across communities (Guiterez, 1992). The word “sanitation” also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal.

Sanitation includes all four of these engineering infrastructure items (even though often only the first one is strongly associated with the term “sanitation”):

Excreta management systems

Wastewater management systems

Solid waste management systems

Drainage systems for rainwater.(Strauss, 2000).

The term sanitation has been connected to several descriptors so that the terms sustainable sanitation, improved sanitation, unimproved sanitation, ecological sanitation, environmental sanitation, on-site sanitation, dry sanitation are all in use today (Obode, 1989).

Hygiene is very important to healthy living and survival of humanity especially to students in these off-campus hostels where little or no care is given to the sanitary conditions. Hygiene is the practice of keeping one-self and one’s surroundings clean so as to prevent illness or the spread of preventable diseases (Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation and Ministry of Education, 2009).

It is often referred to as the behaviours and measures which are adopted so as to break the chain of transmission of infections both at home and in school. While lack of safe water, sanitation and prevalence of poor hygiene behaviours is the major cause of death among students in developing countries, a contaminated environment and poor hygiene practices account for over 6% of the total burden of disease among students in these countries (UNICEF & WHO, 2009).

In some of these off-campuses, there are problems of over crowding and these affects the health of the students in these hostels. More than 50 students share 3 toilets. Mostly girls in hostels have inadequate sanitation facilities, with this premise , the researcher seek to find out the implication of sanitation practices on students health in off-campus hostels in Ugbowo. Inadequate sanitation and water in these hostels jeopardise students health to a large extent (Nouhei, 1991).