Improving Health by Introducing Better Sanitation

Sanitation and hygiene affect our health. However, still there are people who
dont pay much attention to this. Based on WHO data, 2.5 billion people lack access
to improved sanitation. That means theyre prone to many infectious diseases, such as
diarrhea or soil-transmitted helminthes infection. More than 1.5 billion people, or 24%
of the world's population are infected with soil-transmitted helminth infections
worldwide. This usually found on people living in rural areas.
Infectious diseases spread because of poor sanitation. For example, some
people in certain area still use a source of drinking-water that is faecally contaminated
with pathogens. This happened because there are still people practice open defecation.
In regards of food, some pathogens enter human body through food that are not
properly cooked, washed, or peeled. On another case, other pathogens enter human
body orally because of dirty hands. This usually found in children who play outdoor
often.
Health is a shared responsibility. This means, a student also has a role. As a
medical student, it is important to learn better sanitation practice so that later it can be
introduced to the people who are susceptible to many infectious diseases. There are
few things can be introduced. First, people can learn how to wash their hands
properly. Second, introduce the habit of eating properly cooked food to reduce
transmission of pathogens. Third, encourage local government to provide access to
sufficient drinking water.
Washing hands is a basic thing that can be taught but has a significant impact
on improving quality of health. People who are at high risk of infected by infectious
diseases should develop a habit of washing hands properly, especially before and after
having a meal or after having outdoor activities. Just by doing the simple act of
washing hands, people can avoid the infection of soil-transmitted helminthes,
diarrhea, and many other gastrointestinal diseases.
Properly cooked food has become important because some of the soiltransmitted helminth eggs are attached to vegetable leaves that are not well cooked.
By cooking the food properly, pathogens such as helminthes eggs will undergo
denaturation which will make the pathogen inactive. It is important to make this fact
known by the people so that they naturally practice the habit.
According to UN Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and
Drinking Water 2014, drinking water has a big role from eradicating poverty and
hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating infectious
diseases, to ensuring environmental sustainability. A healthy drinking water shouldnt
smell, be transparent, and tasteless. If it has even one of those parameters, the water is
probably undrinkable.

Improving health needs everyone support. As explain before, health is a shared

responsibility. Those three things that has been said before could not happened if only
one or two people doing it. Even it is simple, but it has a big impact on improving
overall health.
Name: Keren Mantik
Gender: Female
Semester: 4
Email: krnmantik@gmail.com