Residents of some communities in the Nadowli-Kaleo and Wa East Districts that have attained Open Defecation Free (ODF) status have testified that defecating in latrines brings dignity and respect.
They said it had also saved the community from sanitation-related diseases such as cholera and stressed the need for every community to strive to stop defecating in the open.
The people said this during an ODF verification exercise by the Upper West Regional Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee on Sanitation (RICCS) in those communities.
Interacting with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Gure, an ODF community in the Nadowli-Kaleo District, during the verification exercise, Naa Alphonsus Siibu, the Chief of the community, emphasised the importance of owning and using the household latrine.
He said they no longer have to risk the attack of snakes by going to the bush even at night to defecate.
He said their children also used to fall sick very often, and sometimes they ran diarrhea, but that had stopped because they no longer defecate in the open.
“We all used to defecate in the bush, and you feel ashamed when you chance on a woman defecating. When they meet you somewhere they can’t even look into your face.
“All these are inconveniences we were going through, so these toilets have brought a great relief to us. I tell my people that we should not wait for someone to come and tell us to construct latrines, it is for our benefit to have them.
“If a stranger or visitor comes here and sees that we are not defecating in the open, there is no faeces outside, and the environment is clean, the person will respect us as a community,” Naa Siibu explained.
At the Gyili community, Mr Oscar Seidu, a resident, said since he constructed a toilet in his house and stopped defecating in the open, his fowls were not dying as they used to.
The situation was not different at the Banongomah and Nafulyiri communities in the Wa East District as the residents of those communities recounted the benefits they were deriving from the household latrines.
Mr Sampson Metere Sibaar, the Head of the Nafulyiri community, told the GNA that owning and using the latrines was a blessing to the community and they would sustain their use.
“We did not know this is how important it is to have a toilet. No one goes to the bush again, our animals are not dying again, and, in the night, you don’t have to go to the bush, you just walk into your toilet, and you are safe there,” he asserted.
Those communities, therefore, encouraged members of other communities that still defecated in the open to try to own and use toilets in their houses rather than defecating in the open.
Madam Emma Tuonfiribo of the Upper West Regional Environmental Health and Sanitation Department encouraged the ODF communities to sustain that status by reconstructing their latrines anytime they collapsed.
She also urged them to regularly practice hand washing with soap or ash to complement the benefit of the latrines.
As of December 2023, 836 out of 1,168 communities in the Upper West Region had attained ODF status.
GNA
CAE/BM/LAA
10 Feb. 2024
Photo caption: A RICCS member inspecting a household latrine
