<<Print>>

POOR SANITATION and lack of access to clean water led to the death of 144 people in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region between 2010 and 2013. Out of the number were 71 children under five years and 73 adults. Bongo District Health Information Officer, Mr. Hagan Bomansaan has disclosed. With little or no improvement in sanitation and access to clean water in most communities in the district, Mr. Bomansaan feared that if steps were not taken to address the situation, the district could still record high death rate this year and the subsequent ones. In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of a star-up training programme on sanitation and access to clean water at Bongo, the District Health Information Officer also observed that within the same period, most adults who survived from poor sanitation related diseases lost productive working hours whereas school children who also survived lost precious school hours. Statistics by the 2012 Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) Water Coverage Survey had shown that there were 102,719 people in the district which had 219 communities. Meanwhile, only 79,384 of that total population, representing 77.3%, had access to the district�s 282 boreholes and 198 hand-dug wells. The District Planning Officer, Mr. Niyi Adigun, also told The Chronicle in an interview that the district was still lagging far behind in addressing indiscriminate defecation. The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF recently declared Bongo as the �worst offender� in open-defecation rankings. He said only 4% of the district�s population had toilet facilities. To make matters worse, the excess fluoride deposits in the underground water in the district was staring residents in the face as it continued to discolour their teeth and give them discomfort, whenever they open their mouths to talk. In order to address the situation, Water Aid Ghana has initiated what it calls Water and Sanitation Advocacy Project. The intervention was aimed at building the capacity of residents to demand from duty bearers, safe drinking water and improved sanitation. With financial support from the European Union (EU) and technical support from the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) and the Integrated Action for Community Development (INTAGRAD), the project was being piloted in the Bongo District, the Accra Metropolis and the Gushegu District. The beneficiary assemblies were expected to establish equitable, sustainable and improved water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) service delivery in ten communities in each of the three select assemblies. At a start-up workshop in Bongo, Policy Officer for the project, Mr. Enoch Cudjoe, said the overall objective of the project was to strengthen civil society capacity as a prerequisite to promoting a more equitable society and reducing poverty. The specific objective is to increase the capacity of local communities and civil society organisations (CSOs) to effectively demand and monitor the provision of equitable WASH services through evidence-based dialogue with local duty-bearers.