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Water resource has come under great stress in Ghana due to growing population and increased in demand for clean water. However about 30% of treated and distributed water in Ghana never reaches homes or is loss in transit either through illegal tapping or damaged pipes. This creates a huge demand for water in urban cities in Ghana.

Water is also increasingly be impacted negatively by climate change reducing the volume of water by at least 2 per cent annually. To growing cities like Tamale, Accra, and Kumasi, this is the biggest problem demanding political action.

However, solving Ghana’s water problem-the solution is not far fetching. The best models in water management have been found in Denmark. Denmark has been able to discover modern technologies efficient and effective enough to have resolved leakages in water production, distribution and monitoring systems. With high technologies and efficient regulation system, Danes water engineers never bothered over the ages of a pipe line.

Ghana had over the years expanded water distribution networks to reach as many homes as possible and to meet the high demand for water but failed to programme for reducing urban water losses leading to expansion of a cycle of inefficiency in water management. Tamale has projected population of 537,986, according to the 2010 population and Housing Census, making it the fastest growing city in West Africa.

Cities are growing. Today’s urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030 when three out of five people will live in cities according to the United Nation (UN). The UN also estimated that water consumption on a global scale will increase by up to 30 per cent before 2030, leading to an even greater supply gap for countries already facing water crisis. At the same time demand will be concentrated geographically in cities.

Less than 20 years from now, with “business as usual approach” and average economic growth, demand for water will be 40% greater than known available freshwater resources. The UN suggested that closing this gap will require a new approach to water management.

Ghana’s water: Ghana since the beginning of 21st century has been facing water crisis majority of which is caused by management inefficiency, high operational cost, and damaged distribution networks (old pipes), lack of modern or new technologies that are effective and efficient. Because of inefficiency in water management, Ghana could not determine properly the gap between water treated and distributed to households. This gap is known as Non-Revenue Water (NRW) or urban water loss.

Factors said to have increased urban water losses the world over also include inaccurate billing system, deficient customer registration, leakages caused by deteriorating infrastructure, poor water pressure management, inaccurate metering, reservoir overflow, unnecessary flushing, insufficient management, energy crisis, and illegal connections to water networks among other things.

Denmark’s example in efficient water management and distribution system

Surrounded by water, the people of  Denmark (Danes) have always taken pride in preserving this natural resource. The water the Danes consume is underground and would do nothing to pollute or waste it when pumped out.   Denmark holds a long tradition of integrated water management and is willing to take responsibility and contribute to solving the major global water challenges. Denmark is green technology nation.

As pace setters in integrated water management, Denmark which is one of the smallest European countries have developed effective and efficient water management system. In Denmark’s water management system, old pipes are not necessarily a problem. In the capital, Copenhagen, there are pipes that are as old as 100 years but they don’t experience leakages.

What this small nation did to achieve this efficiency in water sector is to place a political focus on the water management and creating a legal regulation that motivates the water utilities.

Aside this, the Danes have deplored high and efficient water technologies to monitor leakages, and redesigned effective distribution networks. This system proved that water losses are not supported by the age of the pipes. Maintaining distribution system is the sure way to cutting down urban water losses and Denmark leads in this direction.

This is a small country with a population of 5 million and had learned to manage her limited natural resources. for efficiency, the country had learned to become one of the technology producing and exporting nations in the world exporting energy, water, and ICT and agriculture technologies.

Ghana water crisis would surely be a thing of the past if the high levels of non-revenue water which has serious impact on the financial viability of water utilities due to revenue losses and unnecessarily high operating coast could effectively maintained.

To address this problem in Ghana water sector, there must be a political will and honest managers and employees of Ghana water treatment and distribution network and faithful customers who are willing to pay. The water problem must necessarily be dealt with without political correlation but as national agenda. Denmark should be Ghana’s mentor in water management. stayed tune for part two.

Health benefits of safe water supply and sanitation facilities

Infectious diarrhoea is mainly responsible for the burden caused by water-borne and water-washed diseases. From the health perspective, improving access to safe water supply and sanitation services is a preventive intervention, whose main outcome is a reduction in the number of episodes of diarrhoea and accordingly a proportionate reduction in the number of deaths. 

Based on published reviews, large surveys and multi-country studies, this analysis estimated the health benefits of improving access to safe water and sanitation at the global level and for several regions. Health impacts of such improvements will vary from one region to another as they depend on the existing levels of water supply and sanitation access and the region-specific levels of morbidity and mortality due to diarrhoeal diseases. Health impacts would be greater in regions where the number of unserved is high and where the diarrhoeal disease burden is significant.

Thus, option 1, achieving the MGD target for water supply only, would lead to a reduction of episodes of diarrhoea of up to 4% in the poorest regions; while option 2, achieving the MDG target for both water and sanitation, would lead to an average global reduction of diarrhoea episodes of 10% (ranging from 0% to 14% depending on the region). For option 3, access for all to both improved water and sanitation would reduce the number of episodes of diarrhoea globally by 16.7% (ranging from 0% to 20% depending on the region). 

For option 4, additional improvement of drinking-water quality such as point-of-use disinfection in addition to access to improved water and sanitation, would lead to an average global reduction of 53% (ranging from to 0% to 55%); and option 5, access to in-house regulated piped water and sewerage connection with partial treatment of waste waters, could achieve an average global reduction of 69%, compared to a situation where there is no access to safe water and sanitation (ranging from 0% to 71.5%).

Non health benefits of safe water supply and sanitation facilities

Beyond reducing the water-borne and water-washed diseases, providing better access to improved water and sanitation confers many other diverse benefits ranging from the easily identifiable and quantifiable (costs avoided, time saved) to the more intangible and difficult to measure (convenience, well-being). As much as feasible, these must be taken into account in a cost-benefit analysis.

One set of benefits related to the health impacts that are relatively easy to quantify, are the cost-offsets. These are the costs avoided due to less illness. The related benefits accrue to both the health sector and to patients themselves. 

Cost savings in health care are mainly due to the reduced number of treatments of diarrhoeal cases. Also, patients will avoid costs incurred by seeking treatment, including expenditures on care, drugs and transport and the opportunity costs of time spent on seeking care. The global cost savings of intervention option 1 would be US$2.1 billion per year, and would be raised to US$7.3 billion per year for intervention option 2.

Another set of benefits related to less illness are the avoided days lost, with respect to formal or informal employment, other productive activities in the household, or school attendance. They are traditionally split into two main types: gains related to lower morbidity and gains related to less death. 

This analysis adopted the convention that time spent ill represents an opportunity cost that is valued at a rate linked to minimum wages. The annual global value of adult days gained would be US$210 million for intervention option 1, rising to almost US$750 million for intervention option 2. Due to the considerable health impact of disinfecting water at point-of-use, the value of productive days gained would be over US$4 billion for intervention option 4, and would reach US$5.5 billion for intervention option 5.

Finally, one of the major benefits of improving access to water and sanitation derives from the time saving associated with closer location of the facilities. Time savings occur due to, for example, the relocation of a well or borehole to a site closer to user communities, the installation of piped water supply in house and closer access to latrines. They translate into increased production, higher school attendance and more leisure time.

In this analysis, the value of convenience time savings was estimated by assuming a daily time saving per individual for water and sanitation facilities separately, and multiplying these by the minimum wage rate for each region. The annual value of these time savings, spread over the entire population would amount to US$12 billion for intervention option 1, to US$64 billion for intervention option 2, US$229 billion for intervention option 3, and to US$405 billion for intervention option 5.