Mr. Augustine Ebisike, the Registrar, Environmental Health Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON), has advised health officers to intensify efforts aimed at checking the quality of water consumed by people.
Ebisike told newsmen in Abuja recently that the measure would help in detecting cholera before it could get to epidemic level.

He also said that the measure was the best solution for detecting the outbreak of cholera.
The registrar said that that the same measure was applied in the 1996 cholera outbreak in Kano main market and that it was successful.

``In 1996, there was an outbreak of cholera in Kano, and we quickly traced it to the well water in Kano main market where the people took their drinking water from, and which was contaminated with defecation.
``What we did was to disinfect the water with chlorine and everything became normal again,'' Ebisike said.
He said that currently, preventive measures to curtail cholera outbreak at the local level were ``too low''.
Ebisike said that more awareness programmes on sanitation was needed to sensitise the rural populace on the need to keep their environment clean.

He also called on the Federal Government to strengthen the capacity of the environmental health officers with adequate knowledge and skill to combat the epidemic.
Dr Nse Akpan, Former Desk Officer on Health Matters, Ministry of Environment, identified unhygienic preparation of food, open defecation and unsafe drinking waters as some of the causes of the recent cholera outbreaks in some parts of the country.

Akpan, however, commended the ministry for conducting series of awareness campaign on sanitation matters in the 36 states of the federation, including FCT.
``The ministry had conducted a lot of sanitation activities across the nation; every June 28, the ministry always commemorated the International Year of Sanitation, on hand washing campaign,'' he said.

According to Akpan, more environmental health officers are needed on the field to sensitise the rural populace on sanitation matters.
He also advised the rural populace to always boil the water collected from the rivers and filter it before drinking and to wash their hands after changing baby napkins.

A Consultant Psychiatrist at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Dr Bola Ola, has said that Nigeria does not have a comprehensive mental healthcare policy.
Ola, at the inauguration of the Lagos State Mental Health Stakeholders Forum recently in Lagos, said that mentally challenged people in Nigeria were being neglected.

The consultant psychiatrist called on the government to institute an all-inclusive `mental health policy` to cater for the needs of persons living with the illness.
Ola said the absence of such a policy gave the impression that mentally challenged people in Nigeria were not well cared for.
He added that the government needed to provide an enabling environment for citizens because the lack of that would heighten the rate of depression among the people.

“Mental illnesses are predominant in any environment that stress and hardship is commonplace, `` he said.
The psychiatrist argued that a person's state of mind was a reflection of the state of his environment and, therefore, an environment that is not socially encompassing will automatically depress.``
``The government has to provide an enabling environment for citizens so that they can be less prone to mental illnesses”, he said.

The Founder, Mental Health Foundation, Dr Emmanuel Owoyemi, said that the human resource of any nation was its greatest asset.
He defined mental wellbeing as a person's ability to develop their potential; build strong and positive relationships; work productively, creative and be able to contribute to the community positively.
Owoyemi stated that a person's mental state was like `` a capital or cash deposit in the bank account in the brain.
`` And if the account was dormant, such a brain could not contribute to the community and by extension, the nation does not develop.``

He added that at present there were a lot people with mental problems in our prisons that were not being properly cared for.
Owoyemi said that it was important for government to carry out a rigorous campaign against the stigmatisation of people with mental illness.

``They are also normal human beings who can contribute their quota to the society if properly cared for, `` he said.
He urged the government to propose a bill on mental healthcare and draw up mental health programmes that are to be implemented with the collaboration of the citizens.
“Government has a huge role to play in the care of mentally challenged people so that people will stop to see them as nuisance to our society”, he said.