By Eunice Hilda Ampomah/William Fiabu, GNA
Accra, Oct. 16, GNA – The Ministry of
Sanitation and Water Resources in collaboration with the Community Water and
Sanitation Agency (CWSA), has commemorated the Global Hand Washing Day with the
Greater Accra Markets Association (GAMA) in Accra.
The commemoration on the theme, “Clean hands,
a recipe for health”, was to promote hand washing with clean water and soap to
reduce preventable diseases such as cholera, which is associated with improper
hygiene and hand washing.
The programme entailed delivering of speeches
from the Sector and other stakeholders as well as a drama demonstration by
members of GAMA on the need to maintain proper hygiene and practise good hand
washing before touching food stuff.
Madam Cecilia Abena Dapaah, the Minister of
the Sector, delivering a keynote address, said the focus on the theme, was hand
washing and handling of food, including food hygiene and nutrition.
he said the contamination of food items with
faecal matter could easily occur if one did not develop the habit of automatic
hand washing with soap and water, adding that poor hygiene was also linked to
wasting and severe acute malnutrition.
She disclosed that available research had
shown that children with diarrhoea do not only eat less but were less able to
absorb nutrients from food, because the body became too busy fighting off
diseases.
Madam Dapaah noted that food borne illnesses
were major causes of death particularly among children under five years, adding
that up to 70 per cent of cases of diarrhoea maybe associated with poor food
hygiene.
She emphasised that the negative effect of
under nutrition due to poor food hygiene during the first 1,000 days of
physical growth immune system and brain development may be irreversible.
The Minister said human hands were principal
carriers causing pathogens from person to person either through direct contact
or indirectly through surfaces and proper hand washing with soap helped to
remove germs from them by preventing transmission of respiratory infections and
diarrheal diseases including cholera.
She encouraged the public to provide hand
washing facilities in their homes and urged school authorities to imbibe into
students’ good hand washing practices by providing hand washing facilities
including clean water and soap.
Madam Dapaah said: “The power to save the
lives of millions is in our hands. I wish to appeal to everyone in this market
and the country at large to make hand-washing with soap a top priority in their
daily activities and provide a better future for the present and subsequent
generations.
“I, therefore, direct Metropolitan, Municipal
and District Assemblies to henceforth take sanitation issues seriously and wage
a war against mice at our various markets in the country”.
Mr Worlanyo Kwadjo Siabi, the Chief Executive
Officer of CWSA, said in 2003, a monitoring and evaluation baseline carried out
by Research International, a market research organisation recorded that ‘only
2.7 per cent and 6.2 per cent’ of mothers and children respectively were
observed to wash their hands with soap at critical times, for instance after
visiting the toilet.
He said the results provided a justification
for CWSA to intensify the campaign for hand washing with soap.
Mr Siabi said CWSA had effectively coordinated
the Global Hand washing Day Celebration for 10 years since its inception in
2008, and its award winning advert ‘hohoro wonsa’ created a national visibility
and awareness on hand washing with soap.
He said currently there was a high awareness
on proper hand washing however, the practice had increased only about 30 per
cent, and had been transforming hand washing with soap from an abstract good
idea into an automatic behaviour change with focus on practice.
Mr Mohammed Adjei Sowah, Chief Executive of
the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) urged the public to collaborate in
ensuring that the President’s vision of making Accra the neatest city in Africa
a feasibility adding that, it was a collective responsibility.
He said Accra at a point was declared the
seventh dirtiest country in the world because of how citizens disposed off
their faecal matter.
He said in 2015, Accra recorded over 20,000
cases of cholera and over 200 sufferers died from it.
Mr Sowah noted that the Minister had
commissioned 24 toilet facilities for 24 schools in Accra including changing
rooms for the female students.
He said for 2017/18, there had been no record
of a single case of cholera in Accra because the sensitisation measures were
improved.
He said the AMA would meet all market leaders
to deliberate on how to ban selling foodstuff on the bare floor.
GNA