Nigeria: Campaign Against Open Defecation, Polio, Fashola Tells FG

Lagos — Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, on Thursday urged the Federal Government to initiate campaigns against open defecation in the country, saying, "This is one of the ways polio virus is spread."

Fashola, who made the appeal while addressing physically challenged persons and school pupils at the formal launch of the anti-polio animated comic movie, 'The Polio', in Oregun, Ikeja, produced by Olugbenga Kuye.

The Governor lamented that the country should have been excluded from the list of countries still battling to eradicate poliovirus, saying, "if everyone took the campaign against the virus serious like the Lagos State government," the virus would have eradicated from the country.

He said that Lagos had in the last five years not recorded any polio case but "as long as other parts of the country still have this virus and they could move from their state to Lagos, then residents of Lagos remain at the risk of getting infected."

The governor noted that central government needed to initiate campaign especially against open defecation in the country, to correct the societal ill.

He said, "we have seen samples of the virus in water bodies, in soil test and others. This means that our hygiene levels are not still where they should be. The indiscriminate dumping of refuse and open defecation must stop in Lagos and in Nigeria.

"We must take this very serious. We must henceforth stop open defecation in our communities. It is something that we must put an end to, if we really want to put an end to polio in the country."

Source: TheGuardian