By
Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA
 |
| Open defaecation on a Ghanaian beach |
Ghana has slipped further on its
sanitation performance globally to become the world’s 7th worst performing
country, according to a new report released last Tuesday.
Ghana was ranked the 10th worst
country in last year’s report, which indicates that its performance on
sanitation coverage has worsened in the past year, Mr David Duncan, the Chief
of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) at the UNICEF office in Ghana, told the
Daily Graphic.
Ghana, which currently has a
sanitation coverage of 15 per cent, is ranked after South Sudan which has a
seven per cent coverage, Niger, 11 per cent; Chad, Madagascar and Togo, 12 per
cent each and Sierra Leone which has a 13 per cent access to household toilets,
the measurement used for the ranking.
Mr Duncan said that although in 1990
when Ghana had seven per cent coverage Ethiopia only had three per cent
coverage; the country had been bypassed by Ethiopia, which now has 28 per cent
coverage, while Guinea has also progressed from eight to 20 per cent.
He was also full of commendation for
countries like Syria and Afghanistan which currently have coverages of 96 per
cent and 32 per cent respectively despite being in wars.
Changing
a status quo
To change Ghana’s current status as
one of the world’s worst performing countries in sanitation coverage, Mr Duncan
said there was the need for more investment in the sector. “At the moment there
is a broad sanitation model and strategy, which definitely is rolling out and
that will help dramatically but we need more investment in sanitation and the
challenge is that we really need that commitment,” he said.
According to a statement announcing
the findings of the report, “in Ghana, the goal to meet the Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) on access to water was quickly met ahead of time.
However, the indicators for sanitation targets closely mimic that of the global
numbers – every fifth Ghanaian, or 5 million people defaecate in the open.”
It also said that while in Ghana
about 7,500 children die annually from diarrhoea, which is linked to unsafe
drinking water, poor sanitation, or poor hygiene, studies also show that only
one in eight Ghanaians regularly wash their hands, a situation which aggravates
outbreaks such as cholera.
The report suggests that children
especially are disproportionally affected and that globally, disparities
account for the inability to achieve universal access to water and sanitation,
adding that there is still a lot to do, as a lack of water and sanitation and
hygiene lead to a large burden of disease which is completely preventable.
Quoting the report, the statement
said that worldwide, one in three people, or 2.4 billion, are still without
sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defaecate in the open.
Impact
of lack of sanitation access
Meanwhile, the WHO and UNICEF have
cautioned that the lack of progress on sanitation threatens to undermine the
child survival and health benefits from gains in access to safe drinking water.
Commenting on the latest report,
Madam Rushnan Murtaza, the UNICEF Ghana representative, said “Sanitation is
important to maternal, newborn child health and child nutrition, unfortunately,
the results of poor sanitation claims the lives of too many children.”
The report also says that it is
critical to learn from the uneven progress of the 1990-2015 period, to ensure
that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), close the inequality gaps and
achieve universal access to water and sanitation.
Writer’s email: edmund.asante@graphic.com.gh
This
story was first published by the Daily
Graphic on July 22, 2015
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