Three days ago, October 20, marked one year since the World Health Organisation declared Nigeria Ebola-free. While the Ebola scourge raged in the country, Nigerians, both young and old, were compelled by circumstances to imbibe the habit of hand cleaning with water and soap or with hand rubs (sanitizers) – at home, at school, at business premises, everywhere. One year down the line, this salutary practice seems to have been jettisoned.
The other day I walked into a pharmacy in my neighbourhood and asked the attendant, a nurse, if they had hand sanitizer for sale. Several minutes passed as she cast a suspicious look at me, assessed me from head to toe, before answering, “Yes, we have hand sanitizer.”
It was then I introduced myself and my mission.
“Sorry I’ve not come to buy hand sanitizer,” I told her gently. “I am actually a journalist. I just want to know whether hand sanitizers are still on sale and what the patronage has been like since Nigeria was declared Ebola-free last year, compared to what obtained between July and October of 2014. What has it been like?”
Her mood relaxed as she breathed a sigh of relief. A subtle smile played on her face, the first time since I walked in. “Honestly, when you came in and asked if we had hand sanitizer,” she said to me, “the first thought that crossed my mind was: is Ebola back in Nigeria? Because since the country was declared Ebola-free last year, nobody has come here to ask for hand sanitizer, let alone buy any. It’s been so bad that the stock we have now is the leftover from last year.”
Incredible as this may sound, I daresay it is representative of the reality across the nation. If you doubt it, let’s do a check. Now when last did you use a hand sanitizer? Let’s even forget about hand sanitizer for a second. Since Ebola was wiped out of Nigeria, how often have you cared about even ordinary handwashing with or without soap?
Let’s expand a little, beginning with your workplace. All the automated hand sanitizers they installed in every lobby in your office building between July and October last year, haven’t they vanished? Let’s go even wider, to the banks and other public buildings. When was the last time you saw those hand sanitizers, automated or manually-operated, or even ordinary water and soap, at the entrance of a Nigerian bank, public building, school or even hospital, public or private? Okay, let’s agree that you have seen this practice maintained in a few places even in its most skeletal form, when was the last time you took notice or used any of these facilities?
You see, that’s the point. Many of us probably just thought that hand cleaning was just about Ebola and so should be discarded once Ebola was out of the way. How wrong! Hand cleaning, according to experts, is actually the best do-it-yourself vaccine against infections.
“Proper hand hygiene is all that is necessary to prevent many deadly infections [not just Ebola]: by handwashing, and where this is not feasible, by alcohol hand rubs (sanitizers),” wrote Lawal Bakare, a trained dentist and team lead at Ebola Alert, while articulating “Five Things Nigeria Must Do To #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree”, just a day after the WHO declared Nigeria Ebola-free.
Jim O’Neill, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, who chairs the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, in an article “Using antibiotics wisely”, writes, “In some parts of the world, the best way to combat drug resistance will be to encourage changes in behavior that reduce the spread of infections and minimize the need for treatment. PROPER HAND WASHING [emphasis mine] is a great place to start.”
The WHO actually recommends two methods of proper hand hygiene: hand rubbing and hand washing. Hand rubbing (using hand sanitizers) is preferred when there is no visible bodily or other infectious fluid or matter on the hands, while handwashing is recommended when visible bodily or other infectious fluid or matter is present on the hands. For me, however, because it is impossible to have access to soap and water every time you need to clean your hands (except, of course, you have a way of carrying them about everywhere you go), hand rubs seem the most convenient.
It is to underscore the cruciality of handwashing that the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing organized the inaugural Global Handwashing Day on October 15, 2008. Since then the day, which is dedicated to “increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives”, has come to be celebrated on that date every year.
Conversely, dirty hands remain one of the commonest ways of transmitting life-threatening infections, particularly in children, either directly or indirectly. As Bilkis Bakare of the Lagos State Ministry of Information writes in a recent article, “This is due to the fact that one of the first habits learnt by a child is putting of hands in the mouth. Therefore, if the hands are dirty, the likelihood of contracting diseases like respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases and others is rife. Bacteria and viruses spread easily and quickly through touch.”
But even if handwashing was just about Ebola, is Nigeria completely out of the woods? The words of the former health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, remain instructive: “Nigeria has won the battle against Ebola Virus, but this world war rages on on other fronts in other countries. The war certainly is not over. A reinforced Ebola Virus could still invade Nigeria . . . As long as there is a case of EVD in any part of the world, every country of the world, every human being in this planet, remains at risk.”
CHUKS OLUIGBO
