Over the years, Ghanaians generally have been urged to put an end to open defecation but the pleading appears not to have been well embraced.
This is because the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR), Ms Lydia Seyram Alhassan, has reiterated it, this time urging specifically that stopping open defaecation would help to combat the cholera outbreak in the country.
We agree with the minister because even though other environmental factors like salinity of river water, hot air temperature and flooding can cause cholera, insanitary conditions, including open defecation, are very high-risk factors.
For instance, when it rains, the run-off can carry human excreta in the open into rivers and other environmental reservoirs of the cholera bacteria.
Rivers, for example, have long been recognized as constituting an ecological corridor and habitat of the cholera bacterium and its host, the cope pod.
This means when there is flooding, the cholera-causing bacterium, Vibrio cholera, can easily come to town and cause havoc.
In view of this, every effort to eradicate open defecation must be supported.
It is not good at all to hear that the 2021 Population and Housing Census report puts open defecation in urban areas at nine per cent, whilst nationally, it stands at almost 17.7 per cent.
As of 2021, the country’s urban population was 19,038,233, which means 1,713,441 residents were practicing open defecation, whereas at the national level, 5,451,600 were doing so based on the 2021 PHC figure of 30.8 million as the national population.
As of 2023 the urban population had reached 20,213,181, while the national one was 34,121,985.
This is to say that the open defecation figures may have changed, all things being equal.
However, there is this good news that the government has made “significant strides” in increasing improved household toilets from around 13 per cent in 2018 to over 25 per cent in 2021.
It is clear, the “Pit The National Sanitation Campaign launched in 2017, which embodies the commitment to end open defecation and enhance overall sanitation infrastructure across the nation, is behind this achievement.
Therefore, if it is maintained, the country would go far.
Open defecation is an enemy that must be conquered by all means.
Thus, the district assemblies must make sure that all homes have toilets, even if they are uncompleted.
There are cases of people living in uncompleted buildings that have no toilets.
Besides, there are cases of undeveloped plots of lands on which squatters are living without them having toilets and so ease themselves into plastic bags and throw them away anywhere.
This too must be checked.
And while we say this, there is one phenomenon that the assemblies must strictly control, if we want to contain cholera outbreaks.
There are some house owners who have connected their manholes to nearby drains to dislodge human waste from their homes into them and this too needs checking.
What about mortuaries which direct their waste water into nearby drains?
They must be made to treat it before releasing it into the environment.
If it is true that 25 per cent of the urban population, for instance, depend on public toilets as places of convenience, then the government must build more public toilets in the urban areas and also in certain big towns in rural areas.
If the country really hopes to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – Safe toilets for all by 2030, then it has to seriously fight open defaecation and provide more well-managed public places of convenience