Red Cross, Nestle Ghana promote good hygiene
The Ghana Red Cross Society in collaboration with Nestle Ghana, have organised a Community Based Health and First Aid (CBHFA) training of trainers workshop in Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
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The training workshop was held to promote good hygiene and water and sanitation use in the country. It was also a component of the Ghana Sustainable Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Project (Gha-WASH) that was launched in the Ashanti Region in July this year.
The Gha-Wash project is a long term partnership agreement between Nestlé Ghana and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC). The agreement aims at promoting good hygiene practices, make available sanitation infrastructure as well as provide deprived communities with borehole facilities.
The Communication and Corporate Affairs Manager for Nestle Ghana, Mrs Ama Amoah, said as part of implementing Nestlé Cocoa Plan, the company had contributed CHF5 million towards sustaining improvements regarding access to water, sanitation and hygiene services in cocoa-growing communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
“Under Nestlé Cocoa Plan, the company commits to improve the social conditions of farmers and help them run profitable cocoa farms as a means of ensuring sustainable cocoa production”.
She said in 2015, a baseline household survey to evaluate accessibility to water, sanitation and hygiene services was carried out in 52 sites in the Ashanti and Eastern regions, targeting 50,000 people with health and hygiene promotion activities; 35,600 people with sanitation infrastructure; 45,600 people with water supply infrastructure and 1,300 people with capacity building skills in project management.
The project, she revealed, would be implemented by the Ghana Red Cross Society through a community engagement approach in close cooperation with key stakeholders such as the ministries of Health, Education, Local Government and Rural Development, and agencies such as the Ghana Health Service.
“This include social mobilisation, operations and maintenance of water and sanitation infrastructures in communities and schools in 75 selected communities within the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions by 2018.”
Appeal
The secretary general of the Ghana Red Cross Society, Mr Kofi Addo said our health issues should be in our own hands, urging the public not to wait for government to provide us with logistics before building a toilet in the communities or our homes.
“If we are able to build 8 rooms, why can’t we build about two or three toilets? Do we have to wait for government, an NGO, and development partners to come and build it for us? The answer is no”.
According to him, keeping our surroundings clean devoid of open defecation, while there is access to quality water are the surest way of having access to quality life.
Touching on the workshop, he said many of such programmes had been organized to educate people to take their health into their own hands but yet there had not been any improvement in the living standards of the communities.
He blamed the participants for not giving of their best and entreated them to ensure that they give back to the people in the communities what they were being trained for to enhance the lives of the people in the selected communities.
He advised the volunteers not to relent in their efforts to ensure that there was change in the selected communities in the area of sanitation to enable all the stakeholders to at least know that they were not wasting their resources.