Support provision of WASH services in schools
The Policy Officer of Water Aid Ghana, Ms Aicha Araba Etrew, has advised children to wash their hands with soap under running water before and after eating to protect them from diseases.
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She explained that germs on one’s hands led to the contraction of diseases, stressing that it is important for children to wash their hands when they visit the toilet to avoid contamination.
Ms Etrew said this at the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Education Programme in Accra. It was on the theme: “Celebrating Succes: WaterAid Ghana and the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSbc) Water Programme.”
She said schools without toilets left children to defecate in the open and that led to low enrolment, poor attendance rates and poor performance, since students will ask for permission to visit the latrines and wouldn’t come back to class.
She urged parents to train their children to learn to uphold personal hygiene.
Ms Araba stated that the WASH programme did not focus on schools only, but also the agriculture and the health sectors.
That, she said, had led to the cultivation of good hygienic practices and would also help prevent needless deaths.
She advised students to use the Internet to research on menstrual hygiene and encouraged the female students to talk freely with the opposite sex about menstruation so that boys would be enlightened about it.
There was a photographic exhibition segment of the event where students interpreted the pictures on display.
The Fundraising and Resource Mobilisation Advisor, Ms Charlene Asamoah, expressed gratitude to the teachers for coaching the students to be ambassadors of Water Aid in their various schools.
She advised the students to make their opinions known wherever they found themselves.
