Sanitation
While many part of the world take stock of their achievement in sustainable environmental practices, Ghana is still gripping with basic environmental challenges such as drains, sewage systems and solid waste. When one walks down the streets in Kejetia market, you will be overwhelmed by all of the trash that litters the streets. Trash and waste everywhere.
Kumasi is the second biggest city in Ghana yet there is garbage all over. These are many reasons for this.
One of the major reasons for this problem is lack of proper sanitation. Only 77.5% of homes have toilets. Only 30% have flush toilets. The average person in Ghana especially Kumasi has to share toilets with 10 or more persons in public latrines(urination and defecation facilities ).Lack of plumbing has led to huge amounts of water being dumped on the streets.
Moreover, lack of a working sanitation system is a big problem, most of the people in the country think that waste removal is for the wealthy people because they can afford it. Only 60% of the population has regular waste collection. And most of the pipes are in polluted gutters. Broken or vandalized ones are open to germs.
Again, people lack public awareness and proper education about causes and prevention of diseases. Most people are not aware that Ghana?s trash problem is a growing cause of many of its diseases. Malaria accounted for 53% of Ghana?s illnesses last year. According to the National Malaria Control Programme, ?During 2009, a person in Ghana died from malaria about every 3 hours. This means about 3000 people died of malaria in Ghana that year alone.
The above are the major causes of sanitation in Kumasi, we can mitigate this issue to get a standard sanitation like the advance country if we start to provide dust bin in all vantage points, people understand the effects of open defecation, if people gets ideas about the importance of sanitation, if we youth volunteer even if once every month as organized by the previous government .If Ghanaians know what sanitation means and follow the small ideas given to reduce or stop poor sanitation in our communities when help us make poor sanitation as a history of the past.