Seventeen communities in two regions have been declared open defecation-free.

This follows their ability to have 100 per cent coverage of latrine facilities in their communities.

They are the West Mamprusi and the Jasikan Municipalities in the North East and Oti Regions.

Plan International Ghana, through a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach, assisted the communities to attain that feat.

The Project Manager of Plan International Ghana’s Integrated Package for Sustainable Development Project (IPADEV), William Domapielle, disclosed this at the project closure meeting in Accra.

With support from their German national office, the IPADEV project sought to contribute to creating a resilient and protective environment both at home and at school for better health and learning outcomes for children, especially girls, through equitable access to and effective utilisation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD), education, health facilities and services.

The project, which spanned from October 2022 to December 2025, targeted 20 communities in the two districts.

Project

Mr Domapielle said as part of the project, 667 new household latrines were constructed through the CLTS approach, which helped to improve household latrine coverage from 37 per cent to 101 per cent across project communities.

Additionally, he said some existing latrine facilities were improved, and hand-washing facilities and stations were provided for schools, health centres and community centres of the project areas.

Mr Domapielle said as part of the project, a real father’s club was established to promote positive masculinity and gender-responsive parenting alongside 37 village savings and loans associations in the project communities.

He said through those initiatives, men had become active participants in caregiving and household decision-making, women’s workloads had reduced and communities had gained both the financial resources and social structures to sustain improved WASH practices.

The North East Regional Minister, Ibrahim Tia, commended Plan International Ghana for the wonderful work it was doing across Ghana and specifically in his region.

Empowerment

The Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Constant Tchona, said access to improved WASH services was essential for the empowerment of girls and women as they helped enhance their dignity and strengthen their position within the community.

Providing statistics, he said available data as of 2023 indicated that only 25 per cent of Ghanaians had access to basic sanitation, while about 56 per cent relied on shared latrines; one per cent use unimproved facilities, and 18 per cent practice open defecation.

Consequently, he said three in every four households were at risk of consuming water contaminated with traces of faecal matter—largely due to poor sanitation and hygiene practices.

He said the IPADEV project demonstrated strong performance across all indicators, adding that it introduced several innovations, including the establishment of local spare-part supply systems for hand pumps—ensuring that communities no longer had to travel long distances to repair broken facilities.

A child sanitation diplomat, Artaldus Sung Kuuntanaa, called on children to practice good hygiene and educate their peers and families about sanitation and its negative effects on the environment if it was not practised safely.