Communities in the Northern Region that still depend on unsafe water sources are taking advantage of a new initiative to purify contaminated water for use.
Under the initiative, World Vision, with support from its partners, are sensitising communities to the use of water purifiers produced by the Procter and Gamble (P&G) Company in Pakistan.The purifiers are to be given to the communities free of charge.
So far, three communities in the Tolon District in the region, Nafara,Yipelgu and Gburimani, have been shown how to use the water purifiers to make dirty and contaminated water clean.
This initiative has become necessary because over the years, the World Vision and it’s partners have made strenuous efforts to drill boreholes but that had yielded no positive results due to low water table in some parts of the region. For instance, efforts to drill boreholes in districts such as West and Central Gonja,Tolon,Saboba, West Mamprusi, Kumbungu, and Savelugu have been unsuccessful. This compelled residents of those areas to depend on water from unsafe sources such as dugouts, streams, rivers, ponds and dams.
The new initiative is also a stop gap measure to address the issue of lack of potable water in affected communities of the region. It would also help to mitigate the effects of floods and drought on the rural people and reduce the outbreak of diseases such as typhoid, cholera and diarrhoea that are associated with drinking water from unsafe sources.
Records showed that over the years, there have been cholera outbreaks due to floods in some countries in the West African sub-region, including Ghana.
As part of measures to ensure that the initiative is sustainable, the partners of World Vision, including the P&G Company, have promised to ship a 40-foot container full of the P&G water purifier to Ghana within the next two months. It would contain 2.4 million sachets of the water purifiers.
A total of 71 countries worldwide have used the water purifiers and recommended their use.
According to Dr Greg Allgood,the Founder of the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water, every kind of water transported from one end to another could be polluted.
He intimated that over 70 per cent of water, whether clean or not, is contaminated before consumption.
Five West African countries, Ghana, Chad, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger recently held a forum dubbed; “The Learning Lab” in Tamale.
Representatives from the five countries shared experiences on water quality issues in West Africa. They also visited communities in the Northern Region, where they carried out a number of demonstrations regarding the use of the water purifiers.
The Director of the World Vision Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme in West Africa, Mr Sam Diarra, noted that household treatment of water was a sure way of preventing water-related diseases.
He said since the introduction of the water purifiers in 2011, a lot had been achieved in terms of water quality issues and building the capacity of communities to treat their various sources of water before drinking them.
Mr Diarra stressed the need for behavioural change in water treatment issues.
Manager of the Ghana Integrated-WASH Programme of the World Vision, Mr John Nedjoh expressed the hope that the necessary assistance would be given to his outfit and the P&G to make the treatment of household water safe.
Daily Graphic/graphic.com.gh
Ghana