Candidates for the Ghanaian presidential election scheduled for December 2008 answered questions on prime time radio about their sanitation plans if they are elected.

The candidates took turns to answer questions on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show over three days from 23 to 26 September 2008. The media platform dubbed Flag bearers on Environmental Sanitation was by a coalition of water and sanitation NGOs in the country.

Everyday one of the candidates was taken through a series of questions to assess their level of understanding of the current state of sanitation and their commitment to dealing with the problems of sanitation. Other components of the radio appearances included:

• their personal appreciation of the sanitation issue in Ghana
• how they would prioritise sanitation with other important sectors such as health, education, energy, agriculture
• what they would do differently to ensure that Ghana achieves the sanitation MDG.

Influencing presidential campaign manifestos

The radio show provided an opportunity for candidates to highlight sanitation (and water) in their presidential campaign manifestos. The NGO coalition aimed to influence the next president to commit to sanitation, and to enable the people of Ghana to hold the next government accountable to their promises for solving Ghana’s sanitation problems, including promises about the provision of toilets.

This was part of the campaign activities marking International Year of Sanitation (2008) by the coalition of local NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) and other members of the global End Water Poverty Campaign coalition.

Source: Ghana WASH News no 1, October 2008, Resource Centre Network, forthcoming

Toilet talk can save lives

If someone compiled a list of things people would prefer not to talk about, human excrement would be somewhere near the top. It is, to say the least, hardly a topic of public conversation. Unfortunately, our nose-wrinkling aversion to toilet talk hinders important discussions about sanitation. (…)

Because taboos have always surrounded human excretion, it is usually talked about under the cover of euphemisms. We flush away our waste so easily that we don't have to think about it, and that's a problem, according to British writer Rose George, author of the new book “The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters”, as quoted in The Ottawa Citizen, 21 Oct 2008.

Even health organizations don’t like talking in the necessary detail about these issues. “Public health professionals talk about water-related diseases, but that is a euphemism for the truth,” writes Ms. George. “These are shit-related diseases.”

Source: Wash Resources News, 8 October 2008

Tags: advocacy, africa, information and communication, sanitation