The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has disclosed that about 1.5 million Ghanaian households do not have access to a toilet facility.

According to GSS, these households still practise open defecation.

GSS stated that “the 1.5 million figure represents 17.7% of the household population with the prevalence of open defecation in rural areas (31.3%) being more than three times higher than that of urban areas (8.9%).

This information is contained in GSS’s 2021 Population and Housing Census General Report on Water and Sanitation.

“Point of defecation for households without access to a toilet facility is predominantly bush/open field/gutter (1,380,720 households) followed by beach/water bodies (61,401 households),” GSS added.

The Service made this revelation as the world commemorates World Toilet Day on November 19^th, 2022.

It added that with the figure recorded this year, there has been a reduction as compared to previous years.

“The percentage of households without access to toilet facilities was 19.3% in 2010 and 20.2% in 2000 indicating a reduction of 2.5 percentage points in the prevalence of open defecation over the 21-year period.”

However, the regions with the highest proportion of households without access to toilet facilities are; the Upper East – 80.0% and North East -79.7% regions, adding that eight in every 10 households practise open defecation.

The GSS noted that there are six regions where more than 100,000 households are practising open defecation: Northern (242,034), Upper East (180,797), Ashanti (111,306), Greater Accra (105,717), Volta (102,997) and Bono East (102,442).