The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals enjoin Ghana to drastically reduce the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation by 2015. Although Ghana has already exceeded the 78 percent pass mark for water, the country has so far failed to substantially increase access to improved sanitation countrywide. Evidence of this failure is widespread in the Garu Tempane District of the Upper East Region, where thousands of people defecate in the open daily, putting themselves and the entire population at risk from poor sanitation-related diseases. With sponsorship from Star Ghana, Yusif Rahman, a Citizen Journalist from Garu Tempane, has been investigating the phenomenon as part of Citi FM’s Hold My Hand Documentary Series.
