As Ghana battles floods, polluted rivers and water-borne diseases, clean hands will soon become a luxury if leadership does not rise to defend water, life, and the next generation.
In Part 1 of this series, it was emphasised that handwashing remains one of the simplest and most powerful ways to protect children from infections.
This was the focus of the Global Handwashing Day 2025 celebrated on October 15.
Today, in Ghana, a deeper challenge threatens to undermine all the campaign messages and efforts at promoting handwashing.
And that is the crisis of unsafe and shrinking water.
Ghana’s fight for clean hands faces serious environmental and public health challenges.
Exactly a year ago, there was a cholera outbreak that swept through several regions, including Greater Accra, Eastern, Western and Central regions.
According to the Ghana Health Service and WHO situation updates, thousands were infected and numerous lives were claimed.
Many of these infections were attributed to contaminated water sources, poor waste management, and limited access to safe handwashing facilities.
At the same time, pollution of our water bodies has reached alarming levels.
The Water Resources Commission estimates that over 60 per cent of Ghana’s rivers and water bodies are polluted, mainly due to irresponsible and illegal mining (galamsey), industrial discharge, and poor sanitation.
Communities that once depended on rivers like the Pra, Ankobra, and Offin for water now struggle to find safe sources for daily use — including handwashing.
This is a real problem because many fisher folks have lost their livelihoods while farmers have lost their farms and produce in this outbreak of lawlessness.
During floods, human waste, refuse, and chemicals are washed into water systems, worsening the contamination.
In spite of this, perennial flooding in the big cities continues unabated exposing residents to diseases.
Outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and other infections often follow these floods. Children living in crowded areas or displacement camps are usually affected the most.
Isn’t it ironic that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when citizens were urged to “wash hands frequently with soap under running water,” many communities were relying on rivers that had turned brown with silt, mercury, and chemical waste from galamsey operations?
Water insecurity
This contradiction actually exposes Ghana’s water insecurity level and tells of our failure to safeguard natural resources.
This is how many Ghanaians became vulnerable during that public health emergency.
Currently, we are faced with another layer of vulnerability as scientists have now confirmed that heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic have found their way into river sediments, fish, and staple crops — including cassava, plantain, yam, and vegetables grown near mining zones.
The issue is no longer environmental, but also nutritional and developmental.
Chronic exposure to heavy metals can impair growth, learning ability, and the immunity of children, further worsening vulnerability to infections that handwashing seeks to prevent.
Still our national response is lethargic, numb, boring and without any iota of urgency.
Crises
If current trends continue, Ghana risks a cascade of public health crises ― more frequent and severe outbreaks of diarrhoeal and waterborne diseases, heightened school absenteeism, and long-term economic losses due to healthcare costs and lost productivity.
Access to safe water and hygiene must be treated as national priorities.
The call for the absolute halting of small-scale mining activities for a period is in the right direction.
Our water bodies need to heal.
Our lands and vegetation are crying for deliverance from physical and chemical destruction.
Communities and families must stand up and protect their water sources.
Leadership that fails to defend the nation’s rivers is leadership that endangers children and posterity.
Protecting water is protecting life and every Ghanaian has a role to play.
The writer is a child development expert/Fellow, Zero-To-Three Academy, USA.
E-mail: nanaesi.gaisie@wellchildhaven.com
