As schools across the country prepare to reopen, experts have warned that the shortage of toilets and hand washing facilities in schools put students at serious risk of getting infected with COVID-19.
The experts urged the government to urgently take steps to ensure provision of toilet and hand washing facilities in all the schools or suspend schooling for the rest of the year.
According to them, the consequences of re-opening schools in the absence of such basic facilities will be enormous, noting that the transmission of the virus is likely to be more as mixing occurs in the schools.
They urged the government to do everything within its powers to minimise the risk of school students’ exposure to COVID-19.
The government, they said, should put the right structures in place to prevent COVID-19 transmission among students, adding that government should also ensure that school students don’t pick the viral infection in school only to take it home to infect the elderly and other vulnerable people.
It will be recalled that Kogi, Osun and Lagos states have announced resumption dates for schools. Kogi State approved September 14 for the resumption of primary, secondary and tertiary schools.
Osun State announced September 21 as the tentative resumption date for schools in the state, while Lagos State announced September 14 as resumption dates for tertiary schools in the state and September 21 for primary and secondary schools.
Aside from the concern of health workers on the dangers that the school reopening posed to students, several associations within the education sector, including the Nigeria Union of Teachers, the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools and the National Association of the Parent-Teacher Association of Nigeria have also expressed their concern over schools resumption, noting that decision to open schools at this point may be coming too early.
It may be recalled that schools across the country were closed due to COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to close the schools, the government had said, was to safeguard the health and general wellbeing of children, youths, teachers and educational personnel.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with PUNCH HealthWise, Professor of Paediatrics at the College of Health Sciences, University of Ilorin, Aisha Gobir, said paediatricians are worried that adequate Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities have not been put in place for schools to reopen.
Prof. Gobir, said, “Indeed we are worried because of what happened in other countries where cases of COVID-19 rose astronomically after schools reopened.
“Our schools are low in the provision of toilet and hand washing facilities and are
also crowded. These will increase cases. We advise a suspension of schooling for the rest of this year.
“Online education facilities can be consulted for our children. Parents need to be counselled on safety first before education.
“Government must continue to review strategies and guidelines for school opening. The schools have not made these provisions.”
Gobir who is also the head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health of the University of Ilorin, further pointed out that children resuming school at this time will come with lots of implications, besides increasing rates of infection.
“There is evidence from what’s happening all over the world where schools reopened, that infection rates went up.
“Children are less likely to observe physical distancing and the use of face masks.
They are likely to touch surfaces without caution.
“Perfect hand washing is not possible too. The transmission is likely to be more as mixing occurs in the schools. Also, these children will carry the virus home to the vulnerable group of elderly and those with associated diseases like diabetes.
“These are the people who are more likely to die. In short, the implications are increasing cases, increasing hospitalizations, crowding of isolation centres, exhaustion of health workers, more deaths from COVID 19 and perhaps, a second wave of the pandemic here.
“Then we may experience a lockdown and its consequences again”, the consultant paediatrician warned.
According to her, children are likely to contract the virus. “Their risk of getting infected isn’t low. It’s the risk for serious disease and complications that’s low.
Therefore, children are less likely to die or go to ICU. But they can be spreading the disease”, she noted.
Also worried about school resumption amid a shortage of WASH facilities is a public health physician and Executive Secretary, Nigerian Academy of Science, Dr. Oladoyin Odubanjo.
Odubanjo told PUNCH HealthWise that looking at the level of preparedness in terms of infection prevention and control, most schools are not ready, especially the public schools.
He said, “Government is the regulator; unfortunately, the government is the one that I will be most worried about how much infrastructure and resources it can provide in its schools.
“This is because, if you were to provide hand wash, sanitizers, I think the government will be the one that will have the biggest challenge in ensuring that they do not run out in the schools.
“For owners of private schools, because they are in business, they will try and meet those conditions to reopen. If we are now talking about schools that do not have water and toilets facilities, for instance, it means that all of those things ideally have to be ensured before you can open up schools.
“You must ensure that running water and toilets facilities are in place. All these the government have not shown us. Except they are ready with all that, then they shouldn’t reopen schools.”
Dr. Odubanjo who is a past Chairman, Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria, Lagos Chapter, further said, “We now have a serious situation at hand that has only called attention to what has always existed and we should use this opportunity to fix the problem now.
“COVID-19 has less impact on children but it is very complicated dealing with children at school in such a matter because their parents become very sentimental.
“Apart from that, children can serve as a reservoir that tends to carry the virus to more vulnerable people. So children can bring the virus home from school to infect the elderly and that makes the whole thing complex.”
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