In spite of the progress that has been made to ensure that children and families in every part of the country have access to safe drinking water, data has shown that 76 per cent of households are a risk of drinking water contaminated with faecal matter.
Major challenges affecting basic rural sanitation delivery includes a lack of planning and coordination of programmes aimed at improving sanitation and this is due to limited staffing in the various institutions and limited resources for capacity building and implementation of programmes.
As of 2015, only one rural household out of ten was using improved household toilets while three in every ten of them practised open defecation and not a single district in Ghana has achieved an open defecation-free status.
There is no clear urban basic sanitation strategy and plan in Ghana. Various approaches and interventions in urban basic sanitation are not effectively coordinated and monitored. Unlike rural communities, social mobilization for sanitation and hygiene promotion in urban settlements is quite complicated due to its cosmopolitan and multi-cultural nature. However, sanitation is a social and public good whereby every citizen needs to participate in discussions and decisions that will benefit everybody.
The Ghana Demographic and Health Survey reveals that while more than half of Ghanaian households have a designated place for washing hands, only about one household out of every five has water or other cleansing agents available at home. (source: www.unicef.org)
To reduce the spread of preventable waterborne diseases in our selected communities BHA will focus on the following:
Supporting the communities with other initiatives they may come up with.
