From Timothy Olanrewaju Maiduguri

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in collaboration with Borno State government has engaged Community Champions in Internally Displaced Persons camps for victims of the Boko Haram insurgency in the state.

WHO Health Operations Manager for Emergency Response in the Northeast Dr Isaac Boateng disclosed this in an interview with reporters at the Teachers’ Village IDP camp, Maiduguri, on Wednesday, during a sensitisation campaign by the organisation to mark the World Hand Hyiegene Day.

‘WHO has Community Champions in IDPs camps in Maiduguri, Jere, and most local governments. We have set up people to teach people how to maintain hand-hyiegene as a behavioural attitude not as mere practice,’ Boateng explained.

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He said regular washing of hands was about 90 per cent effective in prevention of infectious diseases.

Boateng said Borno did not record an outbreak of Cholera in 2020 possibly because of increasing hand hyeigene behaviour as a result  of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘We are hoping this behaviour of hand washing will continue,’ he said.

He explained that the WHO team was going round the IDPs camps not only to mark the World Hand Hygiene Day but to observe the level of compliance by the people.

Nearly three million people have been displaced from their homes in the over a decade of violence in Nigeria’s northeast.