Ms Akosua Agyepong, Ace Ghanaian Musician and Centre for Environmental Protection and Natural Resources (CEPNR), a non-governmental organisation, at the weekend teamed up to create awareness about the dangers of insanitary environment on human health.
The exercise, which took place at Dansoman; a suburb of Accra, exposed the risks people take to get a roof over their head.
Ms Agyepong told Ghana News Agency on Wednesday that people are living very close to a leaking main sewerage line serving the community and are cooking, eating and conducting normal activities near a heap of rubbish and stagnant water.
“I was surprised to see sewerage matter passing through dwelling places.
“The insanitary conditions people are living in could cause water borne diseases like malaria, typhoid, cholera and diarrhoea,” she said.
Ms Agyepong said she and CEPNR would take the awareness campaign to densely populated areas in Accra such as Agblogboshie where the youth would be mobilised to clean the environment.
She said refuse containers would also be provided for people to dump their refuse free of charge, but warned that those would be caught littering the environment would be arrested and penalised.
Mr Michael Emmanuel Kingsley Mills, Director of Monitoring and Programmes of CEPNR said the awareness exercise would be sustained through collaboration with stakeholders such as the assemblies and the Ministry of Health.
He said CEPNR is responding to the call by President John Dramani Mahama for Ghanaians to get involved in tackling the sanitation challenges confronting the nation.
Mr Mills lauded the commitment of Mrs Lordina Mahama; First Lady, for boosting awareness on malaria prevention at this year’s World Malaria Day in Accra.
He said the First Lady announced that Ghana would soon have a factory, which would provide larvaecides that can kill the mosquito larvae in the pursuit of eradicating malaria.
She appealed to health agencies to increase the scope of the indoor residual spaying of mosquitoes, which is being done in northern Ghana and asked Ghana Education Service to include malaria in the school curriculum, whilst the corporate entities should help government in fighting the disease.
CEPNR in its public health protection programme has a project dubbed: “Fighting malaria from its roots.”
The organisation is therefore involved in mass community fumigation and disinfection of densely populated areas as a preventive measure against effects of poor sanitary conditions to the spread of communicable diseases.
CEPNR had undertaken mass community fumigation exercise in some coastal communities at Bukom, Chorkor, Teshi e Maame and identified Sodom and Gomorrah and its surrounding communities as its next focus.
“This project will serve as a platform to facilitate the engagement of the country’s waste management services and stakeholders in sustaining a clean and healthy environment, “Mr Mills said.
Source: GNA
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