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Mr. Emmanuel Addai, Communication Consultant for UNICEF Ghana has appealed with the media to stop promoting the construction of communal toilets as it is not an effective way of contributing to the achievement of the Open Defecation Free (ODF) Campaign.

He said such communal toilets in most cases rather contributed to the practice of open defecation as most of them were often not neat for people to be motivated to use.

Mr Addai who was speaking during a media orientation programme in Wa ahead of the regional launch of the ODF Ghana campaign rather urged the media to channel its efforts into the promotion of the construction and usage of household toilets in Ghana.

He said the promotion of household toilets by the media would tremendously help in the achievement of the ODF Ghana campaign which would lead to a reduction in its related health problems.

Mr Addai explained that the media orientation was necessary because at the regional launch itself, the media may not have time to understand everything about the ODF Ghana campaign.

“So we met to pre-orientate the media about what the campaign is all about and also brainstorm on the role the media can also play in targeting various institutions and individuals and getting them to also play their roles effectively to help in the achievement of the campaign goal”, he said.

The UNICEF Communication Consultant noted that since the campaign started in 2014, there had been about 50 per cent reduction in open defecation in the Upper West Region which contributed to the region placing first in the District League Table (DLT) this year in the open defecation category.

Mr. Addai noted that the Nandom District in the region stood the best chance of being declared district-wide open defecation free in the whole of the country, adding that in 2011 – 2014, open defecation had dropped from 72 per cent to 49 per cent in the whole of the region.

He said since then, should there be another survey currently, he was optimistic that there would be a further reduction in the 49 percent, noting however that despite all these significant gains over the years, the region still remained one of the three highest open defecation offenders and needed to do more to pull itself out of that category.

UNICEF is supporting the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) to organise half-day media orientation workshops ahead of the impending regional launches of the ODF Ghana campaign.

The objectives are to thoroughly brief the media about the nature, essence and style of the ODF Ghana campaign; trigger pre-launch media discussion on the regional launch event and draw public and stakeholder attention to the event and the role the media could play to help the campaign.