The World Bank on Monday said 32 million Nigerians had
no means of defecation and as such pass faeces in the open.
The report, titled, “Economic impacts of
poor sanitation in Africa,” covered Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African
Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Republic of Congo,
Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania,
Uganda, and Zambia.
“The desk study, Economic Impacts of
Poor Sanitation in Africa, found the majority of these costs to production come
from annual premature deaths, including children under the age of five, due to
diarrhea disease. Nearly 90 percent of these deaths are directly attributable
to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Other significant costs were
productivity losses from poor sanitation, and time lost through the practice of
open defecation.
Adverse impacts of inadequate sanitation
that are likely to be significant, but difficult and expensive to estimate,
include the costs of epidemic outbreaks; losses in trade and tourism revenue;
impact of unsafe excreta disposal on water resources; and the long-term effects
of poor sanitation on early childhood development,” the report’s Executive
Summary said.
In the portion on Nigeria, it said,
“Poor sanitation costs Nigeria 455 billion Naira each year, equivalent to US$3
billion, according to a desk study carried out by the Water and Sanitation
Program (WSP).
“This sum is the equivalent of US$20 per
person in Nigeria per year or 1.3% of the national GDP.”
It also said 70 million Nigerians use
unsanitary or shared latrines.
It also said “the poorest quintile is 10
times more likely to practice open defection than the richest.
Open defecation costs Nigeria US$1
billion per year – yet eliminating the practice would require less than 6.5
million latrines to be built and used.”
The World Bank warned that “open defecation not only
has higher costs than any other sanitation practice, it has considerable
adverse social impacts. Low cost and effective ways of stopping open defecation
need to be scaled up.”
source: PUNCH NG
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