The World Health Organisation, WHO has advised the Federal Government to strengthen environmental health surveillance and monitoring in the 774 Local Government Areas to bring back healthy and safe cities of the good old days.
Officer in-charge, Clement Lasuba, gave the advice in a goodwill message at the 2019 National Environmental Sanitation Day Commemoration on Friday in Abuja.
The theme of the 2019 NESD: is “Stop open defecation for healthy living’’.
Lasuba, represented by Edwin Edeh, the National Consultant Public Health and Environment of the WHO, said that environmental health system at the federal, state and local level should be repositioned to function 24 hours.
According to him, 47 million people defecate in the open with a handful of 13 out of 774 LGAs being open defecation free which therefore accounts for increasing prevalence and deaths from communicable diarrheal diseases such as cholera dysentery, typhoid among others.
