Nigeria invites disease (2)

Recently, operators of some local eateries were ‎arrested for lacing their meat with paracetamol as a meat softener. Paracetamol is an over the counter medication that experts advise should be taken reasonably. Tibetans and Chinese, who do not bury their dead but expose the softer parts of dead bodies to vultures for consumption, after which they cremate the bones, discovered a drastic drop in vultures’ population. A study revealed that the paracetamol in the bodies of the dead led to the death of the vultures. In the human body, paracetamol has been fingered in liver problems. Exposure to very high dose combinations of expired and repackaged paracetamol, diclofenac and antibiotics by unqualified roadside doctors threatens the health of Nigerians. But that is not all.

Have you visited an abbatoir lately? The first thing that strikes you is that most of the bulls and cows slaughtered have one health challenge or the other. Traditionally, herdsmen do not offer cattle for slaughter except those that have some form of disease or those that have been weakened by age. They also offer cattle for slaughter when sudden financial needs arise. If their ignorance can be forgiven, the do-nothing behaviour of supervisors of abattoirs spells danger. Camels, cows, goats, sheep and chicken are slaughtered mostly in dirty and disease prone conditions.

Cow hide is roasted with diesel fuel, used tyres and plastics, not minding the presence of sulphur and other dangerous fumes and chemicals, to produce pomo, or kanda – a Nigerian delicacy. The process denies the leather industry of raw material and supplies the country with poisoned hide and ox tail as food. Workers in the abbatoirs inhale the dangerous fumes to everyone’s satisfaction. The half-digested food in the slaughtered animals and bits of meat are pushed into nearby streams and rivers thereby polluting the water sources. Some wells that provide potable water to the poor derive their water from such rivers and streams. Were flies food, abattoirs in Nigeria would have been the place to buy them. Yet everyone believes that once the meat is cooked the poison departs, forgetting that some pathogens can survive very high temperatures. The meat is also often distributed using vehicles that ought to have gone to the recycling heap. Fumes from silencers of the dangerous jalopies enter the meat ‎as they finally embark on a journey to resellers far and wide.

Refuse collection is another area of concern. Very few incinerators exist in communities and manufacturing concerns. Neighbourhood refuse dumps are loaded with all sorts of medical wastes like syringes, broken bottles of alcohol‎, rotten food, used diapers, clothes, construction and renovation waste and others.

Of great concern are the food, electronic and medical wastes. Scavengers regularly consume half eaten food like bread and chicken, which they pick in refuse dumps. They also get pricked by discarded needles and broken dispensing bottles, rubbed with remnants of pesticides and insecticides and other dangerous matter. They drink leftover soda in bottles gleefully, not knowing whether the person who left it over had illnesses like hepatitis, cholera or even Covid-19. 

Apart from wastes from ecological degradation and danger to agriculture posed by low grade and high grade plastics that are dumped in refuse heaps, when they are burned as an easy solution to disposal, they emit carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide which further damage the ozone layer and produce acid rain. Acid rain is known to kills crop. It also leaches the soil. Scavengers collect very hazardous electronic waste which they later burn down for the copper in them. In doing this, their health and the health of other Nigerians suffer greatly. Even the average government employed refuse collector suffers due to consistent lack of protective gear and exposure to bad fumes from dirt dumps and trucks that take them around. They live with physical and psychological pollution.

Artisans and craftsmen are included in the cycle. Roadside mechanics pride themselves as people who never suffer from toothache because they often suck mouthfuls of fuel in the course of their job. ‎Nobody tells them about how these fumes affect their lungs, contaminate their blood and starve their brain! Ironically, they ‘balance’ the perceived effect of what they have been exposed to by eating an unhealthy combination of fruits and vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, watermelon, mangoes and others soaked in milk and sugar.

Men and women returning home from work are approached by sellers of smuggled, unapproved and unregistered aphrodisiacs popularly referred to as ‘man power’ or ‘woman power’ which they buy for sexual fulfilment.