Sanitation as a Qualification for Healthy Living
By Eke-Dike Chigozie Ozoegede

We must necessarily, first, state out the common literary understanding of the key words; Sanitation, Prerequisite and Health, so that the reader is well communicated to.

When we talk of ‘Sanitation’ we specifically mean the careful preparation and application done with the very purpose of saving the Individual and Public Health from harm, thereby ensuring their Healthy Living. Prerequisite, in itself, implies the proper condition without which the individual and public healthy living will not be realized. In clear explanation, careful preparation and application will be a futility on a poor Prerequisite/Condition of environment; for instance, irrespective of the amount of anti malaria drugs imported by the government, the government cannot claim to protect the individual and the public from malaria in unsanitized/polluted area, which helps mosquito to thrive. Sanitation is what promotes healthy living, not hospitals and clinics which are properly there to cure us of diseases contacted as the result of unsanitized (unhygienic) environment and supplies. Careful preparation and application must go with condition satisfactory to them, as farmers do not plant in desert but in fertile land. In terms of Healthy Living, we clearly understand a state of been strong and vigorous, or, in modern term, being medically fit. We now summarily understood that, to ensure the healthy living/medical fitness of individuals and the public, two things are necessarily involved; the carefulness (Sanitation) and the condition by which the objectivity (the healthy living one wants to achieve) of the Carefulness is realized.

The Philosophical Controversy on Sanitation and Medication:

What do we connote when we talk of the Philosophical Controversy on Sanitation and Medication? By such connotation we simply entail the clear fact that, many have confused and taught Sanitation to be the same with medication, when truly, on the basis of reason, Medication is the result of lack of Sanitation, as mistake is the result of lack of knowledge. If, for example, Mr. Okoro is said to be a sane man, then he is not mad. In the same train of thought, if Mr. Okoro is a Sanitized (Cleansed/disinfected/) man, it means he is a Healthy Living man, not a man who believes in drugs but lives in unhygienic/unsanitized life. Sanitation properly means keeping your environment and foods germ-free, so that you do not contact germs and become subjected to hospitals and drugs.

A healthy living man is a sanitized man, therefore, we assert and uphold that Sanitation is a Prerequisite for Healthy Living; we categorically import the fact that what is medically understood as healthy living is not and can never be independent of Sanitation as explained above. It then implies that Sanitation is indispensable basis for the realisation of healthy living, as light is indispensable basis for seeing.

The Apparent Philosophical Controversy on Sanitation and Medication in the Nigerian Corrupt system:

The Nigerian corrupt system is very much manifest even in the vital issue of Sanitation and Medication role of the government; either the government is a mediocre or it is deceiving the citizens.

The government spend millions on immunisation for the prevention of a certain disease and for the eradication of, for example, Polio. But the same government, in its mediocrity or self-deception, does not make any effort to providing, for example, pipe borne water, and the citizens continue drinking from dirty water supplies and contacting one specie of disease after another and the government, very much ignorant of the fact that Cleanliness (the cleanliness of the environment and supplies to the citizens) is the first law of both the individual and public health, continue boasting of spending millions in the medication of her citizens, care without preventative measure (Sanitation). In such a case, there is health Care and Application without Sanitation, which is like clear eyes in a room filled with darkness. One who is given the best drugs against malaria and continue living in mosquito infected area (unsanitised area) thinking that drugs ensure healthy living deceives himself and is being deceived, since soon after the medication he will be infected afresh.

We must emphasize it that, the term ‘Healthy Living’ is derived from the word Sanitation, and not from the word ‘Drug’, for ‘Healthy Living’ implies breathing in unpolluted air, eating uninfected diet, drinking good water, and living in a sanitised/disinfected environment. When these sanitations are wanting, the result is contacting of diseases. Therefore, drugs are result of unhygienic/unsanitised living. It then philosophically imports that, ‘Healthy Living’ is a Sanitised living. It is either you are living Sanitized (Healthy/germ-free) life or you are living Drug addicted (Drug supported) life. A sanitized man needs mostly mainly vitamin drugs and little medication in his life, but the health of unsanitised man is restless with sicknesses and illnesses until he dies = a wretched living.

We also see the controversy in the understanding of Sanitation in the case of some men, who, for example, confuse Sanitation with the provision of hospitals by the government. Every well calculating man knows of it very well that the possibility of healthy living in our cities filled with hundreds of hospitals is a tale told by an ancient idiot, if our environment and surrounding remain polluted (unsanitized). It is unsanitized environment that pollutes the health of men and makes them patients in the hospitals. So the hospitals are there to cure us of the disease we contacted from our dirty environment and surroundings. Therefore, a man who lives a healthy life is not the man who has personal doctor always at his reach, but the man who lives a clean life (Sanitized life) in sanitized environment. The man of personal medical doctor lives in fear of his health in the care of his doctor, but the man of hygiene (Sanitation) lives in the liveliness of his health.

A government who does not care about the sanity of her cities is simply commercializing the health of her citizens: such government builds hospitals for the purpose of making much money from the drugs supplied through the hospitals. This is because; if the government ensures the sanitation of her cities the hospitals will have little number of ill and sick people to attend.