President John Dramani Mahama has said that the next NDC administration under his watch will work towards ending the age-old menace of open defecation by 2021.<\/p>\n
The President said this at the Banquet Hall of the State House on Tuesday, where he gave highlights of his party\u2019s manifesto for the 2016 polls in December.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”jrw72vEapMUjQLPfGtfVhAh4R8WeQKTq”]The President, who was explaining what his administration\u2019s policy on sanitation would be for the next four years if voted into power, said \u201cOur target is to end open defecation by the year 2021; in the next five years. In the next five years, we want to ensure that nobody has to go and do his business outside in the bush or on the beach or anywhere. And so we will invest massively in providing toilet facilities all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Open defecation age-old practice<\/strong><\/p>\n The practice of open defecation has gone on for years in Ghana, both in rural and urban areas.<\/p>\n According to the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014, twenty-one percent of Ghanaians have no access to a toilet and still use the bush or open field for defecation.<\/p>\n This is worse in rural areas where 34 percent of the population still practice open defecation.<\/p>\n This is largely as a result of the failure of some households in both rural and urban centers to construct such facilities in addition to their residential facilities.<\/p>\n Ghana: 10,000 public schools without toilets<\/strong><\/p>\n In some cases too, government has failed to build toilet facilities for public schools leaving children with no option but to use the bush or the beaches. In fact, a survey conducted in public schools across the country in 2014,revealed that about 10,000 schools did not have toilet facilities.<\/p>\n The number is half the estimated 20,000 public schools in Ghana, apart from the thousands of privately owned schools that may not have toilet facilities.<\/p>\n On the other hand, some of these government-managed facilities have fewer toilet facilities.<\/p>\n Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies are empowered by laws to sanction such home owners, but the laws have been largely dormant.<\/p>\n Without toilets, children\u2019s lives and dignity at stake in Ghana<\/strong><\/p>\n In November 2015, UNICEF said access to toilets is endangering the lives of thousands of Ghana\u2019s most vulnerable children, pointing to emerging evidence of links between inadequate sanitation and malnutrition.<\/p>\n The report\u2019 Improving Nutrition Outcomes with Better Water, Sanitation and Hygiene\u2019, from UNICEF, USAID and the World Health Organization, for the first time, brought together years of research and case studies which demonstrate the link between sanitation and malnutrition.<\/p>\n It said lack of sanitation, and particularly open defecation, which is high in Ghana, contributes to the incidence of diarrhoea and to the spread of intestinal parasites, which in turn contributes to malnutrition.<\/p>\n \u201cImprovements in sanitation mean children in Ghana will avoid becoming stunted due to diarrhoea,\u201d said Susan Namondo Ngongi, the UNICEF Representative in Ghana.<\/p>\n It said diarrhoea is one of the main causes of deaths of children under five years of age each year and is essentially a faecal-oral disease, where humans come in contact with germs-carrying faeces and ingest them. In Ghana where rates of toilet use are low, rates of diarrhoea tend to be high.<\/p>\n Ghana ranked world\u2019s 7th dirtiest country<\/strong><\/p>\n In July 2015, Ghana\u00a0slipped further on its sanitation performance globally to become the World\u2019s 7th worst performing country<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, according to a new report released on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The Joint Monitoring Programme report, \u201cProgress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment,\u201d a collaborative effort between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund, says that the challenge to access improved sanitation is starker in Ghana, \u201cwhich has slipped even further amongst the worst performing countries, now ranked 7th worst globally.\u201d
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\nBy: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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