TACLOBAN CITY – The town of Gamay in Northern Samar has been certified as a Zero Open Defecation (ZOD) municipality by the Department of Health (DOH).
Maria Aurora Dubongco, officer-in-charge of the Northern Samar provincial health office, said that Gamay was certified as a ZOD municipality after a verification by the DOH regional office.
Gamay joins the towns of Mapanas, Bobon, Mondragon, Catubig, and San Roque with ZOD status in the province.
“ZOD status indicates households in the communities have stopped open defecation and are using functional sanitary toilets, a good practice in health,” Dubongco said in a statement on Thursday.
Open defecation is when human wastes are disposed of in the fields, forests, bushes, open bodies of water, beaches, and other open spaces.
Dubongco said the ZOD status is an important step toward improving public health and sanitation and preventing health issues such as diarrhea, worm infections, schistosomiasis, stunted growth and undernourishment.
“This milestone is a testament to the local government unit of Gamay’s commitment in ensuring a healthy environment with proper sanitation practices for healthy residents,” she added.
Gamay is a fourth-class municipality in the northeastern part of Northern Samar with a population of 23,367 people, mainly dependent on farming and fishing.
The town is entitled to receive PHP200,000 from the provincial government for accomplishing the elimination of open defecation and improving sanitation practices.
Under the ZOD campaign, the DOH is pushing that each house should have a basic toilet facility by 2025.
As of 2020, only 26.43 percent, or 11,138 villages, are ZOD-certified.
Only 9.14 percent of the municipalities have achieved municipal-wide ZOD status from among 1,488 towns in the Philippines, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. (PNA)
