How Nigerians unknowingly taste their poop daily!

Do you know that many people taste poop and urine without knowing it? From the coffee mug, toothbrush, door handle, office desk to purse, people pick faecal matter (poop) without knowing they do that. Lots of people have fallen prey to this.

Certainly, life is full of germs and the immune systems are pretty good at defending against most of them. But open defecation and poor hygiene continually expose humans to picking a feacal matter, including its disease-causing germs.

It’s possible. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) specialist, UNICEF-Nigeria, Bioye Ogunjobi quoted the National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASH-NORM) 2018 Survey indicating that on the average, 24.4 per cent of households in Nigeria still practices open defecation.

He spoke at a two-day media dialogue on sanitation with the theme “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet Campaign.” It was organised by the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information, in collaboration with UNICEF with support from European Union (EU) and the UK Department for International Development (UKaid).

“Poop is oily in nature and can still be in one’s hands without knowing. Inadvertently, we all touch our lips. So if your finger is contaminated, you can pass faecal matter into your mouth,” said Mr Ogunjobi.

Open defecation refers to the practice whereby people go out in fields, bushes, forests, open bodies of water, or other open spaces rather than using the toilet to defecate.

At the same time, Mr Ogunjobi says another 33 million citizens use unimproved toilets. Also, one in three Nigerians does not have access to potable water, with 90 per cent of households using contaminated water.

On the average, 34 per cent of schools and 12 per cent of hospitals have access to basic sanitation services. Only 2.4 million people have benefited from UNICEF’s hygiene promotion improvement distribution of hygiene supplies.

The limited access to toilet facilities is a contributing factor to the one in four Nigerians defecating in the open, and therefore an increased possibility of many individuals coming in contact with faeces.

Unfortunately, small bits of poop, including germs from it, thorough hand contact, aerosol and fomites can also get deposited on different surfaces both at home and public places.

Poor hygienic practices cut across all socioeconomic classes and races.  It makes microbial community change and develop over time. A study by TotalJobs, a recruitment company, says one in five office mugs may contain faecal matter because 25 per cent of people don’t wash their hands after going to the loo while at work.

Also, the average office desk has up to 400 times more bacteria than a toilet seat. So people who eat at their desks are most at risk of picking up germs from the toilet, followed by people who chew their pens and those who bite their nails.

In a study in 2011 on household germs conducted by the global public health and safety organisation NSF International, researchers tested 30 surfaces—six of which were in the bathroom—in 22 homes for the presence of bacteria, yeast and mould.

While 27 per cent of toilet seats contained mould and yeast, 64 per cent of toothbrush holders also contained these. Of the toothbrush holders, 27 per cent had coliform (an indicator of potential faecal contamination) and 14 per cent had staphylococcus.  What is more, germs also spread from touching faucet handles and using automatic hand dryers.

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Unfortunately, human faeces ingestion is common in communities with open defecation or without improved toilets. Faeces is olly and so it can easily contaminate the hand or be transferred to other surfaces through touch.

“In communities where they do open defecation, children and adults clean their anus after defecation with sand or leaves. Such habits are not effective. Their fingers are contaminated and when they do not wash their hands properly with soap and clean water, they are likely to ingest faeces without knowing. These are ways by which people promote diseases such as diarrhoea.

“It is subtle but it is important. Having a toilet in school is very important, having water point in school is very important; ensuring that people in the community stop open defecation and that they use the toilet is very important,” said Mr Ogunjobi.

Dr Babatunde Ogunbosin, a consultant paediatrician at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, corroborates the possibility of people eating poop, be it their’s or others when hands are not washed with soap and water after visiting the toilet or cleaning up a child.

He added that since runs off from the open defecation sites easily contaminate water sources like rivers, ponds and well, people that go to source for water from them for their everyday needs also get exposed indirectly to poop as well as germs that cause many water-borne diseases.

According to a study, groundwater contamination is 12.7 times more likely in villages practising open defecation as compared to those declared open defecation free.

“When there is cholera in a neighbourhood and the source of water is not well-taken care off, it is easily polluted and everybody that sources water from that ultimately gets infected. So, open defecation has a lot to do with diarrhoeal diseases. As you know, diarrhoea diseases are one of the five leading causes of death in children under five years,” Dr Ogunbosin said.

Moreover, he said that flies and reptiles from open defecation sites, garbage and sewage also play a role in cases of diarrhoeal diseases, polio, diphtheria, certain skin and eye infections and worm infestation in children.

Dr Ogunbosin declares: “Reptiles, including poultry, when the environment is contaminated are very good sources of germs that cause diseases such as typhoid fever and hepatitis. In the process of handling them, people’s hands can also get contaminated as a result of open defecation and all of this affecting the health of children.”

However, he stated that one of the most important routes of preventing and controlling infections that come from poop is hand hygiene.

Hand hygiene involves the use of both soap and clean water or other mediums like alcohol-based hand sanitisers. There are recommendations on when both require to be used to ensure thorough cleaning of hands.

Dr Ogunbosin, however, warns “if they get water from a wrong source, yes they are washing but it is not optimal. Also, washing inside a bowl is not optimal”.

Similarly, a proper hand wash, he says, includes washing of critical areas such as in between fingers, in between and back of the palm, wrist, thumb and hollow of the palm.