- WASH expert laments impending public health crisis
The recent scarcity of premium motor spirit (PMS) in Lagos has seen a community of lepers in Alabarago resort to drinking contaminated well water.
While engaging a visiting team of UNILAG Communications students on Tuesday, one of the community leaders, Mr. Umar Abdullahi, revealed that a community well has been the major source of water for drinking, cooking and other chores since the hike of PMS and its recent scarcity.
Abdullahi disclosed that the menace of drinking contaminated water has lingered for more than six months as the community is unable to purchase petrol to operate its community borehole plant.
His words: “We have a borehole that was provided for us by an NGO but we don’t use it because of the financial cost to operate it. We still rely on the well to get water as we barely manage to contribute money to use the borehole once or twice a month”
“Our problems have become worse since this year 2024. We haven’t operated the borehole because of the cost of fuel and now there is scarcity. A lot of people are sick because everyone is drinking contaminated water.”
When quizzed about the community’s ability to survive amid the sanitation and water supply constraints, Abdullahi revealed that alum has been the ultimate purifier for the brownish well-water which serves the residents’ basic needs including; cooking and drinking.
“We use alum to refresh the water before drinking. The red water isn’t perfect but we put alum and wait for some time before drinking the water,” he remarked.
According to WASH experts, most of the pipes that supply water to several parts of Lagos via the Waterworks Corporation are expired and rusted, but the Alabarago WASH problems are immense as it doesn’t even have access to the problematic piped water.
Dr. Hope Orivri, a WASH specialist and Communication for Development expert, describes the Alabarago community as one that requires speedy action from the Lagos State government and the opulent traders at the Alaba International market.
Orivri asserted that a disease outbreak from the neglected lepers town will be a health risk for the busy Alaba international market, the neighbouring Lagos State University (LASU), the populous Ojo/ Alaba region, and by extension the entire Lagos State.
While highlighting the critical interplay between WASH facility provision and behavioural change in achieving public health outcomes, she emphasized the dire need for Lagos State government to salvage the Alabarago community.
According to her, Lagos has very beautiful policy on WASH but the problem is a detachment from action.
Despite the absence of clean water and apparent sanitation chaos, Abdullahi believes that his community’s biggest problems are education (absence of schools), housing and vocation.
Alabarago Lepers community is a small cluster of people with disabilities, primarily leprosy, living on the debris generated from Africa’s largest electronics marketplace, Alaba International market.
