Thursday, October 15, is Global Handwashing Day.
At the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs in Accra, stakeholders gathered to remind us of something we all learned as children but often forget as adults: wash your hands. It sounds too simple to be important.
That is exactly why it is ignored. Speakers at the event made a call that the Daily Graphic fully endorses: government must integrate handwashing into national development priorities, with dedicated funding and infrastructure.
We must move handwashing from occasional campaigns to national policy.
The theme for this year's celebration, "I am a Handwashing Hero," is apt. It personalises responsibility. But heroes need support. You cannot be a handwashing hero if there is no water in your school. You cannot be a hero if the washroom in your market has no soap. You cannot be a hero if the clinic where you are delivered of your baby has no handwashing station.
And that is the reality for millions of Ghanaians.
Consider the evidence.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service and the Joint Monitoring Programme by WHO and UNICEF, only about 24 per cent of households in Ghana have a basic handwashing facility with soap and water available at home.
In rural areas, the figure is even lower.
In our basic schools, a Ghana Education Service audit in recent years showed that less than 40 per cent have functional handwashing facilities.
In many markets, lorry stations and public institutions, handwashing is a luxury.
Yet the science is settled and stark.
The World Health Organisation estimates that proper handwashing with soap can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by 30 to 48 per cent and acute respiratory infections — the two biggest killers of children under five in Ghana — by up to 20 per cent.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we all saw how handwashing became our first line of defence.
Hospitals that enforced hand hygiene cut hospital-acquired infections drastically.
Every cedi invested in handwashing infrastructure saves many cedis in health expenditure.
So why have we not made it a national priority?
The answer lies in how we view development.
We tend to equate development with big infrastructure — interchanges, hospitals, airports.
We celebrate the inauguration of buildings but forget what happens inside them.
A 100-bed district hospital without reliable water and handwashing points is not a safe hospital; it is a centre for infection.
Handwashing suffers because it falls between ministries.
Is it health?
Is it education? Is it water and sanitation?
Is it local government?
The speakers at the event were right to underscore the need to strengthen ministerial and institutional coordination.
The Ministry of Health promotes it for disease prevention.
The Ministry of Education needs it in schools.
The Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources is supposed to provide facilities.
The Ministry of Local Government must enforce it in markets and public places.
Without a coordinating framework and a dedicated budget line, we end up with fragmented, donor-driven campaigns that flare up on October 15 and disappear on October 16. This must change. We propose concrete steps.
Every Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly should be required to report on the percentage of schools, health facilities, markets and public institutions with functional handwashing stations with soap and water.
What gets measured gets done.
Ghana has building codes and school health inspection standards.
They must be enforced.
No new school, health facility, market, or public office should be licensed or commissioned without adequate, accessible, and inclusive handwashing facilities — including for persons with disabilities and for children.
Environmental Health Officers must be empowered and resourced to inspect and sanction.
Ghanaian SMEs can produce affordable, foot-operated handwashing stations — the Veronica Buckets that became famous during COVID-19 were a Ghanaian innovation.
We must support local manufacturing of soap and handwashing stations, making them available in every community.
Let us make every Ghanaian a handwashing hero not by slogan, but by ensuring that wherever they are — home, school, hospital, market, church, mosque — soap and water are within reach.
Clean hands save lives.
It is time we budgeted for it.
