Zamfara occupies a significant place in the heart of Nigeria a wealth zone for the nation, it also has become a death zone and no thanks to the environmental crisis that is at the heart of the tragedy.

Lead poisoning is a terrible occurrence and Zamfara has had a great hit by it, resulting in the death of many people especially children whose lives have been caught off by the sheer negligence and mindless exploration of resources.

In this part of Nigeria, the ore that contains gold is also laden with lead. A substantial number of residents were extracting the gold by grinding rocks in flour grinders in their yards and homes — a process that generates cocktails of lead-laden dust. According to reports, the adult grinding the rocks might be a mother with a baby on her back, and the child might inhale the dust that way. Or the dust ended up on the ground — and on children's hands and in their mouths.

The history of this disaster can be traced to the initial crisis that  sparked by a rise in gold prices, which soared from $600 per ounce in 2006 to nearly $1,900 per ounce in 2011 and the current value is about $1,300 per ounce. In a desperate attempt to realise more money, local residents began processing ore for gold.

Medical reports confirm that not less than 734 children below the age of five, out of 5,395 kids within the age bracket, have been confirmed killed by lead poisoning between 2010 and 2013 in Zamfara State and earlier this year, a bit frightening reocurrence was experienced.

Complete characterisation of the problem, remediation of all contaminated villages, recontamination as well as treatment of affected children are the major challenges facing experts in tackling the incident.

Others include the poor implementation of safer mining practices, lack of continuous community awareness/monitoring activities and ineffective collaboration with stakeholders.

In view of this disastrous phenomenon, I think that  three things must be seriously implemented for an effective response to the crisis. These are:

1. Medical care  such as chelation therapy including health education

2. Environmental remediation and

3. Safer mining practices

Chelation therapy will only work with remediation (otherwise the child continues to live in a contaminated environment and ingest lead), and in the long term effective remediation requires safer mining practices to be introduced.