Mrs Adenike Adeoye, a mother of three, works at a shop near her home. Her 2-year-old son attends a nearby nursery school with 40 other children in the neighbourhood. The school proprietress had established it in her late father’s four-room apartment.
“I was at the school for inspection; the school had a dirt gutter by the side of the building. The well, the school’s water source, was close to a small shed where she keeps hens. About 25 children of different ages were taught in a small room,” Mrs Folasade Oladele, Oyo State Health Promotion Officer, recounted.
Mrs Oladele spoke at a day-long review meeting for media professionals in Oyo State by USAID Breakthrough Action Nigeria.
“Increasingly, the personal and environmental sanitation of the school pupils is worsening. Regarding personal hygiene, you see some wearing one school uniform for 5 days; you see pupils with torn uniforms. Most of the school environment is dirty.
It is common practice in most societies to make provisions for early childhood or preschool education programmes of various sorts for children below the official school-going age (usually six years), mainly to prepare them for education in primary schools.
Increasingly, these schools spring up every day and everywhere. It is hard to find a street in Nigeria without a school located in it. It may be a 2-room school with over 30 children, with a table in the middle of the room for the teacher and the children sitting on the floor.
All schools are supposed to meet basic health and environmental conditions before they are licensed to operate.
Mrs Oladele added: “The state has a standard for school registration. If a school doesn’t meet the Ministry of Health and Works department requirement, it will not be recommended for approval by the Ministry of Education to operate.”
Today, children spend most of their waking hours outside of home in school. Providing a healthy environment for all children at school can therefore make an important impact on the lifetime health and academic success of the next generation.
An increasing amount of scientific evidence suggests that the physical environments in which children spend their time have a profound impact on their health and ability to learn.
“Their immunity is low; so if one of them has measles, it gets transferred to the others. If a child has measles in a dirty environment before the day closes, it has transferred to 5 to 10 other children in the classroom,” she added.
Professor Regina Oladokun, a consultant paediatrician at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, however, said parents should not, because of proximity or money, allow their children to attend school in establishments that do not meet conditions that will support their growth and health.
According to her, when it comes to appropriate schools for their children, money should not be the determinant, but rather access to water, sanitation, and hygiene.
“They should go to a standard school where there’s good sanitation and good hygiene so that their children will not come down with any of these infections.
“We should not forget that children should be immunised because even in the best schools, there are still some of these infections that can be spread in the air. But it’s just that when they are closer, the infection can spread in the air even in the best schools.
A compromise on sanitation and hygiene of the school will not directly affect the children that go to such a school attaining their developmental milestones.
However, Professor Oladokun declared that such schools are also likely to have unqualified teachers who are unable to teach appropriately, so over time affecting the IO of children that attend such schools.
UNICEF’s Chief of Lagos Field Office, Ms. Celine Lafoucriere, declared that the provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools has been established to improve health, boost educational achievement, and promote gender equity, which consequently has a positive impact on society.
“Nutrition is key; access to safe water is key. At least half a million children and adolescents in Oyo State still do not have access to basic social services like health, nutrition, water, and education, and there is an urgent need to do more to ensure that the rights of every child are fulfilled.
“The state has been doing great in building access to water, but the water is not safe. We need to address this; if the child does not survive, say because of a waterborne disease like cholera, we will not be able to think about their nutrition, health, or education.”
Ms. Lafoucriere declared that prioritising children, adolescents, and young people‘s well-being ensures them a fair chance to live better and safer lives, including lifting them out of poverty and expanding access to basic social services like health, nutrition, sanitation, water, and education.
“The government’s commitments will be visible in improved budget allocation, release, and implementation for child-focused intervention across the board, as well as overall improvement in budget, credibility, and accountability,” she added.
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