4 Must-Do-Things To Raise School Hygiene And Ensure Pupils' Health

So Ebola came upon us and suddenly we has to close down all schools in the country, potentially for two months — a good measure, most will say.

Agreed.

But why did we have to close them in the first place, to prevent the Ebola Virus disease, which has killed over 1500 people in this outbreak, from spreading into our schools?

It is a good move, because if the disease does get into our schools, especially the public institutions, it would be a disaster.

But beyond preventing Ebola, what are the health standards we hold our schools to in Nigeria?

As kids, we used to have buckets of water in our classrooms and almost every other school had a tap running somewhere from which we refilled our buckets. Teachers required pupils to wash their hands too.

But the story has changed these days

You go to a school and find out that the pupils have to defecate in nearby bushes and there is no water source anywhere near.

In such a setting, especially with students usually cramped in classrooms, the spread of any contagious disease would be rapid. Make that very rapid.

So I think it is time we held our schools to very HIGH health standards:

If our children must be saved, somebody must make laws and ensure that they are followed because we have many dangerous diseases that WILL harvest our children one by one if we sit and do nothing.