Zoomlion Cautions Public Against Imminent Floods

Robert Coleman, Ag. PR Manager Zoomlion

By Patrick Baidoo

The Acting Communications Manager for Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mr. Robert Coleman has called on Ghanaians to change their attitudes towards environmental sanitation. This, he says will reduce the perennial flooding in homes and shops in Accra and other urban areas nationwide.

Zoom Alliance Introduces Sanitation Police

Source: Today

Zoom Alliance, a subsidiary of Zoomlion Ghana Ltd., in collaboration with the Ministry for Local Government and Rural Development and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly will soon introduce a community sanitation police and monitoring taskforce to help curb poor sanitation in the country.

Water cooperation to cope with 21st century challenges

Source: UN.org

The twenty-first century, part of the Anthropocene, will leave us with tremendous environmental changes. Unprecedented population growth, a changing climate, rapid urbanization, expansion of infrastructure, migration, land conversion and pollution translate into changes in the fluxes, pathways and stores of water—from rapidly melting glaciers to the decline of groundwater due to overexploitation.

CWSA & Triple S Develop Strategies To Sustain Water, Sanitation Facilities

Emmanuel Gaze, Director Technical Services - CWSA

By Patrick Baidoo

The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) and Sustaining Services at Scale (Triple S) have held a reflection workshop with its stakeholders to strategize on how best to monitor the functionality of water and sanitation (WASH) facilities to ensure their sustainability.

Community Score Card Tool for Social Accountability in WASH projects

Source: Emmanuel Ato Quansah

Extension Services Specialist - CWSA, UWR

finalato@yahoo.co.uk

Over the years, one common phenomenon associated with the implementation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects in Ghana is the failure of service beneficiaries (community members) to demand for accountability from the service providers. With such culture of social accountability-demand silence of service beneficiaries, implementation of WASH projects in Ghana are likely to suffered under sustainability benchmarks.

Climate Change: Reality or Hoax

Source: Learnstuff.com

Thanks to extensive research and noticeable changes in weather and storm prevalence, it’s getting harder to turn a blind eye to the reality of climate change. Since the Industrial Age spurred the increasing usage of fossil fuels for energy production, the weather has been warming slowly. In fact, since 1880, the temperature of the earth has increased by 1 degree Celsius.

WFP Increases Purchases From Smallholder Farmers In Ghana

Source: WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has bought maize worth US$300,000 (GH¢580,000) from smallholder farmers in Ghana’s Ejura Sekyedumasi district.  This represents WFP’s first Delivery at Place order in the country, which requires farmers themselves to transport food to the end destinations.

Africa Continues to Grow Strongly Despite Global Slowdown

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim

Source: World Bank

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to reach more than 5   per cent on average in 2013-2015 as a result of high commodity prices worldwide and strong consumer spending on the continent, ensuring that the region remains amongst the fastest growing in the world -- according to the World Bank’s latest Africa’s Pulse, a twice-yearly analysis of the issues shaping Africa’s economic prospects.

Immune Response Gets Researchers Closer to HIV Vaccine

HIV/AIDS virus

Source: Duke University Medical Centre

By tracking the very earliest days of a person's immune response to HIV may help researchers to develop long-sought-after vaccine that could boost the body's ability to kill the virus.

Let Your Conscience Be Your Judge

Source: Dr. Kojo Cobba Essel

Moms’ Health Club

(dressel@healthclubsgh.com)

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences.” – Robert B.Ingersoll.

Many of us know the right thing to do to improve our health but we would rather procrastinate. We have a thousand and one excuses but we never add the “real ones”; laziness and lack of self control. We all face these two obstacles, and Ingersoll got it right; we will eventually have to confront the consequences of what we have been doing or have failed to do.

CWSA Intensifies Education on Hand Washing With Soap To Avert Leprosy Scare

St. Paul's Lutheran School pupils washing hands with soap

Source: Patrick Baidoo, (Additional Info: Daily Graphic)

Ghana’s quest of achieving a 54% Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target on sanitation by 2015 seem to be hitting on rocky fronts as the country lingers on a skeletal 14% threshold with almost two (2) years to the set deadline.

WaterAid Urges Support for New Plan To Save A Million Children Annually

Source: WaterAid

UNICEF and the WHO have launched a new action plan tackling for the first time two of the three biggest killer diseases of children under five in Africa – pneumonia and diarrhoea.

Demand for Accountability Amid Resistance to Land Deals in Africa – Report

Source: IIED

People who feel wronged by large scale land deals in Africa are taking a variety of steps to seek justice, according to new research that examines the accountability of public authorities that preside over such deals and asks whether legal empowerment offers citizens scope to expect fairer outcomes.

Ghana Has Highest Reduction in HIV Infection

Dr. Angela El-Adas, DG, Ghana AIDS Commission

Source: GNA

Dr Angela El-Adas, Director General of Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), has said the country’s new HIV infection had been reduced by 66 per cent over the last ten years.

Noodles: Delicious but Dangerous

Source: Baaba Eshun-Wilson

I am one of the first people to admit my love for instant noodles. They taste so good and they're so easy to prepare. The instant noodle craze has taken Ghana by storm, with lots of vendors now selling these noodles.

Can Ghana Avoid the Coming Water Wars?

Franklin Cudjoe, President, IMANI Ghana

Source: IMANI

Have any one of you urban dwellers ever joined a queue all day to fetch water from a well just because your state-managed water system had not been flowing for days?

Sugary Soft Drinks Kill 180,000 Worldwide Annually

Source: America Heart Foundation

Sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks, energy drinks and fruit drinks may be associated with about 180,000 deaths around the world each year, according to research presented by the American Heart Association.

Marriage Can Harm Your Health - Study

Source: Ghanaweb

New findings challenge notion that quality relationships always benefit health, indicating that satisfied spouses gain weight over time because they may be less motivated to attract an alternative mate.

Future of Ghana’s Electricity and Water Situation

Source: Emmanuel Mawuena (kmawuenah@gmail.com)

The lip service in our country is getting out of hand. What kind of country are we living in? Ghana, the acclaimed gateway to Africa, is seriously in limbo and needs support. This self-acclaimed status, gateway to Africa, is merely an erroneous assumption that is far from reality.

Five Reasons Why You Must Eat Breakfast

Source: People.com

Your mother was right when she said that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Some of the (many) reasons why, however, may surprise you.

Ghana’s Faecal Waste Management Threatens Health & Safety – Report

A Cesspit tank emptying faecal waste in Ghana

Source: Francis Tandoh & Justice Lee Adoboe

The management of Ghana’s faecal waste is a threat to public health and safety, a field report launched recently in Accra has indicated.

1,000 Days to Keep the Millennium Promise

The Author

Source: Ban Ki-moon, UN-Secretary General

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but starting this week we can march a thousand days forward into a new future.

WASH Statistics School (aka WASH SS)

This is a learning platform where statistics on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) are compiled and shared.

• Do you know that only 2.3% of mothers in developing countries wash their hands with soap after disposing feces of children? (Market Research Company – Research International, 2003)

• Do you know that the cause of illness of 70% of our out-patients in Ghana is due to poor sanitation? (MoH, 2009)

Cape Town AIDS Forum Targets 'Zero Infection & Zero Stigmatization'

Dr. Angela El-Adas, DG - Ghana AIDS Commission

By Patrick Baidoo

The South African (SA) High Commission in Ghana says its country is ready to host the 17th International Conference on HIV/AIDS and STI’s in Africa, (ICASA 2013).

Australian Gov’t Supports WaterAid with $2 Million

Child drinking water from a tap

Source: WaterAid

The Australian Government has provided about US$2 million to WaterAid Ghana to improve access to water, sanitation and hygiene services in the Eastern and Greater Accra Regions.

WaterAid, Guinness Ghana Fun Walk Support Societies Lacking WASH Resources

WaterAid and Guinness Ghana fun walk

By Gh WASH Times

Statistics from WaterAid indicates that 3.4 million people lack access to an improved water source in Ghana with 86 per cent not having access to improved sanitation. While annually, 3,645 children under five years old die from poor water and sanitation in the country.

Water, Sanitation for Urban Poor: 550,000 Children Hygiene Behaviours Changed

Source: WSUP

A new water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) project that seeks to educate 550,000 (five hundred and fifty thousand) children in Accra and Kumasi about the essence of washing their hands with soap and water at all times is set to be rolled out soon.

Everyone Needs A Place To Go

Toilet facility

Source: Jan Eliasson

Keo Samon, a rice farmer in southeastern Cambodia, had no toilet in her home.  Nor was there even an outhouse or latrine for Keo and her husband and five daughters.  Instead, they would defecate on land around the home, or in the rice fields.

More People Have Access to Cell Phones than Toilets – United Nations

Jan Eliasson, UN - Deputy Chief

Source: Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General

A new United Nations study has found that more people around the world have access to a cell phone than to a working toilet.

Climate Change Threatens Food Security of Urban Poor - Report Warns

A woman farming in Africa

Source: IIED

Policies to increase food security in the global South focus too much on rural food production and not enough on ensuring poor people can access and afford food, especially in urban areas, says a report published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Hydro power Contributes To Water Management in a Climate-Constrained World

A Hydropower Plant

Source: IHA

On the occasion of World Water Day, the International Hydro power Association (IHA) called on the sector to use hydropower to help manage water in a climate-constrained world.

Importance of Social Accountability in Water, Sanitation Projects

Source: Emmanuel Ato Quansah

Extension Services Specialist

CWSA, Upper West Region

The Government of Ghana (GoG) has been supported greatly by Development Partners (DPs) in the provision of sustainable portable water, sanitation and hygiene projects throughout the ten regions of Ghana particularly in the rural-sub sector since 1994.