The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF has disclosed that that every year Nigeria loses over 150,000 children from diarrhoea alone, largely caused by unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene practices.

Disclosing this, the agency’s UNICEF Chief of Communication, Doune Porter,
stated that, “this is equivalent to a big passenger aircraft crashing every day.

The UN agency in a survey released Thursday, to coincide with the Global Hand washing Day, said across six states in Nigeria there are gaps in hygiene
due to poor hand washing practice among the people.

The survey revealed that an average of 82 per cent of the people washed their hands before eating, while only 53 per cent of people washed their hands with soap after defecation, it alarmingly found that only about 14 per cent of the people wash their hands with soap after cleaning a child’s faeces which poses a serious public-health risk.

The survey said regular hand washing with soap after using toilets, after changing children’s nappies and before eating or handling food saves more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention stressing that such practices can reduce deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.

It however observed that hand washing with soap was also an important line of defense against the spread of Ebola in Nigeria.