Immediate action is needed to improve sanitation in order to curb the threatening outbreak of Cholera in the Ada West and East communities of the Greater Accra Region, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) technical specialist at World Vision-Ghana, Yaw Attah Arhin, has indicated.
According to him, the recent cholera outbreaks in Ada highlighted the critical need for an urgent intervention to improve sanitation and provide proper toilet facilities essential to break the cycle of contamination and prevent future outbreak and spread of the disease in the area.
During an appraisal visit on Monday by a team from the World Vision-Ghana and Ghana WASH Journalists Network (GW-JN) to assess the situation and evaluate the availability and condition of toilet facilities and sanitation systems, Mr Arhin was unimpressed about the sanitation and hygiene conditions in most of the communities visited, calling for a multi-stakeholder approach in finding lasting solution to the health crisis.
The visit was also in tandem with the observation of World Toilet Day yesterday, November 20, which among other things highlighted the critical link between sanitation and public health, and raising awareness about the global sanitation crisis and the need for safe and sustainable sanitation systems for everyone with focus on the Ada communities.
A visit to Anyamam, Goi, Azizanya and other communities revealed that most households lacked toilet facilities with residents openly stating that they resorted to the beaches and bushes as places of convenience.
Conducting the team around the Goi community, Assembly man for Goi electoral area, Alexander Gyampoh Sebbie, led the team to a 40-year- old public toilet seen in a very deplorable and unusable state, serving about one 1,000 members of the community.
Mr Arhin stated that the poor sanitation systems, including open defecation and improper disposal of human waste which were seen to be rife, facilitated the seeping of faecal matter into the water bodies which served as major source of water for cooking and other domestic usages, increasing the risk of infections.
From his engagement and discussion with the local authorities, elders, opinion leaders, school children and headteachers, Mr Arhin identified that effective stakeholder collaboration to design a roadmap towards finding lasting solution to the sanitation situation, especially open defecation, was lacking.
He suggested a well-designed roadmap to encourage and support households to build and use safe and hygienic toilets, possibly through subsidies or loans for low-income families could contribute to ending the menace as financial constraint featured prominently in his engagement with the residents.
Additionally, Mr Arhin said installation of communal latrines and implementation of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approaches to educate and mobilise communities to end open defecation would also eradicate or minimise their predisposition to diseases.
The Ada West District environmental health officer, Millicent Ohwie McCarthys, underlined that the incident prompted an emergency District Security Council (DISEC) meeting to map out strategies to help contained the disease.
She stated that no death had been recorded in the Ada West District but six cases have been confirmed since the outbreak of the disease in early October.
FROM KEN AFEDZI, ADA
