It is said that “a stitch in time saves nine,” and “to be fore-warned is to be fore-armed.”
That is why it is heart warming to realise that some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), international organisations and Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) operating in the water and sanitation delivery sector have taken it upon themselves to promote hand washing with soap in the Ghanaian society.
The fact that this simple and cost effective habit, if well harnessed and inculcated into the life styles of the average Ghanaians would be a panacea to majority of the health problems people face cannot be overemphasised.
Diseases such as Cholera, Diarrhoea and other respiratory tract infections which break out in many communities with fatal consequences are all hygiene and sanitation related.
Food vendors have been identified as one of the major sources of these infections as many of them throw hygienic practices to the dogs and treat food which ends up in people’s stomachs with careless abandon.
Visit the preparation points of staples such as kenkey, banku, fufu wache and Hausa koko, and you will be appalled by the sheer tolerance for house flies. Many of these people leave the food items and utensils being used uncovered for these disease-laden flies to feast on.
Unfortunately most of the Ghanaian delicacies sold along the streets are prepared from households and communities that do not have toilets, making people defeacate around in what is described in local parlance as “Free-Range.”
Moreover, workers pick their noses while working while some of them only water their hands, after visiting the very toilets that are mostly unkempt and dip those same hands back into the food they are preparing for public consumption.
Vendors along the streets especially those girls selling dough nuts (bofrot) and other such pastries leave them uncovered for the whole day. They pick their noses while selling and visit public toilets which have the reputation of being some of the nastiest places in the Ghanaian society intermittently, but do not have water or soap to wash their hands with.
With these same hands they serve food to the general public to eat, thus causing an increase in the rate of contraction of these hygiene related diseases.
The GH¢70 million the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) alone is said to have spent on such infections in 2008 is frightening.
Also frightening, but real is the statistical evidence that only 2.3% of mothers wash their hands with soap after disposing of their children’s feaces, while 2.7 % also wash hands with soap after visiting the toilet.
Furthermore, 41% of mothers also wash hands with water alone after cleaning the child’s toilet, while 32% also wash hands with just water after they visit the toilet.
Amidst all this, it is important to note that as many as 63% of Ghanaians do not wash hands at all in a situation where about 68% of Ghanaians depend on public toilets due to the lack of toilets in their homes.
The implication is that majority of Ghanaians visit public places of convenience, and carry germs from there to distribute to all those they greet with their hands.
It is for this reason we would like to join in the campaign of encouraging our folks to start cultivating the habit of washing their hands with soap after visiting the toilets, and before dealing with food.
Why eat back your own or another person’s excrement with the billions of infections and viruses each gram carries?
By this simple and cost effective intervention of hand washing with soap people will save their own lives and those of others, while at the same time reducing the propensity of the outbreak of epidemics such as cholera, diarrhoea, N1H1 (pandemic flu) and many others which come along with high financial costs and the potential for the loss of life.
Indeed, for truly clean hands, wash your hands with soap.
An editorial by "The Financial Intelligence"
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