Provide hand washing facilities in schools
The Chief Executive of the Sustainable Development Focus Limited (SUDEF), a non-governmental organisation, Mr John Baidoo, has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to direct all basic schools across the country to have hand washing facilities in their respective schools to reduce diseases related to sanitary conditions.
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“It should be made compulsory for all basic schools in Ghana to have hand washing facilities; the habit of washing hands should also be enforced,” he said.
Mr Baidoo was speaking at a durbar held at the St Bernard’s Catholic Church in the Susuaso community in the Tano South District in the Brong Ahafo Region to mark this year’s Global Hand Washing Day (GHD).
The theme was: “Clean hands save lives” and hundreds of pupils from the Susuaso Catholic and Anglican Basic schools marched through the principal streets with placards some of which read: “Clean hands; healthy life”, “Avoid germs by washing hands”, “Cholera is preventable”, “Eat with clean hands,” “Save your life, wash your hands,” “Typhoid kills, avoid it by washing hands” and “Clean hands for life.”
Mr Baidoo said lack of proper hand washing behaviour among many Ghanaians, particularly pupils in basic schools, was among the major causes of sickness reported at the health facilities in the country.
He expressed worry that about 90 per cent of “our latrines in health and educational institutions in Ghana do not have facilities for washing hands.”
The Municipal Health Coordinator of the School Health Education Programme (SHEP) in the Tano South District, Mrs Vida Adjei Febiri, cautioned food vendors who sold food in schools to prepare their food in a clean environment.
She advised pupils, saying, “Please, do not buy food from sellers whose surroundings are not clean.”
