ROXAS City – The Department of Health’s (DOH) “Goodbye, Dumi! Hello, Healthy!” campaign that piloted in five villages in Cuartero, Capiz yielded positive results.
The villages were Carataya, Sinabsaban, Lunayan, Malagab-i, and Mahunodhunod.
The campaign aims to “help fathers and mothers, especially in rural barangays, to construct a sanitary toilet for their own families,” according to Supervising Program Health Officer Rolando Santiago.
Santiago said this during a press conference at the Urban Manor Hotel, Pueblo de Panay in Barangay Lawaan on Wednesday.
“After eight months, sanitation coverage in the barangays increased from 44 percent to 67 percent. Presently, the barangays were declared as zero open defecation areas with 100 percent sanitation coverage,” Provincial Health Officer Samuel Delfin told Panay News.
Open defecation refers to the practice of people to go out in fields, bushes, forests, open bodies of water, or other open spaces instead of using the toilet to defecate, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
DOH’s Goodbye, Dumi! Hello, Healthy!” campaign supports the UNICEF-funded Zero Open Defecation Program of the national government.
Aside from Cuartero, the municipalities of Dumalag and Jamindan were also declared as zero open defecation areas.
“We are confident to reach our target of 100-percent sanitary toilet in the entire province even before 2022,” Delfin said.
There are 473 villages in Capiz. Of these, 243 villages with around 25,600 households have not been covered by the program yet./PN
