Municipal food vendors contribute to filthy environment

She said their activities of poor environmental sanitation condition has been discovered to contribute significantly to the high prevalence of communicable diseases in most parts of the country.
In a statement, she said despite increased efforts by the government at improving public health and quality of life, basic health indicator have remained poor since these sanitation related diseases still play a large role in creating ill health and poverty.
“Most food handlers are not aware of the sound public health advice of routinely washing their hands before handling food and after using toilet,” she said.
According to her, this development lead to Kogi State Sanitation and Waste Management Board to enter into partnership with Royal Food Safety of Nigeria to further carry the crusade of sound food sanitation to the grass root particularly to road side food vendors in order to minimize incident of food contamination and poisoning with a view to reducing food borne diseases to its lowest minimal.
Dr. Boniface Ihesiulo, the National President of the Royal Life Saving Society of Nigeria said the aim of his organization is to save lives and to promote environmental safety, water and dry land safety.
He said the organization will train food vendors and handlers on food ethics and safety values to combat food and water borne diseases while the Kogi State Waste Management Board will enforce the food sanitation law.
The Special Adviser to the President on Ethic and Value, Mrs. Sarah Jibril,  in the statement said health education is an important tool to ensuring that food handlers and food consumers receives the basic instructions about food safety principles and the right environment to carry out their duties.
She said the problem of transforming ample information available on the factors that cause food borne disease into educational messages has remained a challenge. Adding that these messages can be directed to the high risk population of the society, and key workers in the food chain to encourage and educate them to apply safety measure in the procession and consumption of food.