Grace Edema Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University of Science and Technology and a Professor of Public and Community Health, Olumuyiwa Odusanya, in this interview, says vaccines are not the primary solution for cholera outbreaks. The Fellow of the Medical College in Public Health and Community Medicine, instead, highlights that prevention, through proper hygiene practices and eliminating open defecation, is key to combating the disease. Excerpts: What is your take on the cholera outbreak in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria? It is a disgrace, that’s what it is.
It is a question of what has been happening. Cholera happens because people eat contaminated food and poop everywhere, that’s all. So, it is easy to eliminate if we have toilets and clean water.
There’s nothing to worry about cholera. It usually happens around the rainy season because the entire poop everywhere gets into water bodies. People don’t boil their water, people eat unhygienic food with the organisms and it spreads from person to person, from foods and water.
Again, because the symptoms are fairly common, people treat it as if it’s a normal illness. “I’m vomiting, I’m stooling,” people will apply the wrong medicine. One thing about cholera is that it quickly rehydrates but most people will look for antibiotics.
That’s not the solution. So, I don’t know what else to say about cholera. There is no research about cholera; it has been with us for a long time.
In the UK, from 1850 or 1854, .
