Global Hand Washing Day launched in Amansie West District

The Millennium Villages Project at Bonsaso in the Amansie West District, in collaboration with community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), has launched Global Hand Washing Day at Manso Dawusaso/Gyegyetreso near Manso-Keniago.

The programme aims at encouraging people to use soap when washing their hands because this could reduce diarrhoea by 50 per cent, caused by using contaminated hands to eat.

Speaking at the launch the Regional Co-ordinator of Public Private Partnership for hand washing with soap, Mrs. Theodora Acheampong, said the venture is a global programme that is being piloted in Ghana, India, Senegal and Peru and Ghana.

She said the over all goal of the programme is to create awareness of hand washing with soap so that by 2020 all Ghanaians will wash their hands with soap at critical times to reduce morbidity and mortality from diarrhoea related diseases whiles also laying the ground work for further efforts to promote hygiene and sanitation.

She said it is targeted at women with children under five years old and those in the Junior High Schools.

“The programme will target the 3.5 million children in 12,000 primary and 7,000 JHS in 110 districts and 2.5 million women with children under five.”

The Bonsaso Millennium Villages Project cluster Manager, Mr. Samuel Asare Afram, said although people around the world including Ghana wash their hands at critical moments, hand washing without soap was most responsible for the majority of child deaths.

Mr. Afram said hand washing with soap would make a significant contribution to meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing death among children under the age of five by two-thirds by 2020.

He said the Millennium Villages Project since its inception two and half years ago has undertaken a lot of developmental projects to improve the living standards of the people in the cluster.