Providing sanitation in a rural healthcare clinic in Ghana

Description
As part of a larger project - Blue Schools in Ghana - the IRHA decided to work in a couple of the rural health centres located in the same region as the schools. This work will not only help to improve the health of the children attending the schools, but also the local population. For this project, the IRHA proposes to build toilets in a healthcare clinic in Northern Ghana to improve the sanitation and comfort of the clinic’s staff and visitors.
Gbullung Clinic is located in Tolon Sub-District, 20km from the town of Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana. It has 20 staff members: 15 health extension workers, 2 community nurses, 2 clinical nurses and 1 hygiene nurse. The clinic receives an average of 20 patients a day from the surrounding area. It is a day clinic, with no patients staying overnight in the building.
Currently, Gbullung Clinic has no toilets. This affects both the health and comfort of the clinic’s healthcare workers and visitors.
To improve the sanitation conditions of Gbullung Clinic, the IRHA and its local partner Rural Women and Deprived Children’s Programme (RUWADCP) will build a new toilet block with two toilets:one toilet for men and the other for women. Hand washing facilities will also be introduced to further improve the hygiene.
The toilets will be Urine Diverting Dry Toilets (UDDT). The main advantage of this type of toilet is that it requires no water to operate, thus saving water resources for other more urgent uses. UDDT toilets are also built in such a way that urine is separated from faeces.
In the long term, this project will help to lower the number of diseases related to poor sanitation conditions at the clinic. It will also improve the environmental quality around the building, as human waste will be dealt with in an appropriate manner.
Comments
Alastair Coull
February 7, 2013
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Hygiene matters!
Andreas Pigni
February 8, 2013
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Hygiene matters!
Alastair Coull
February 8, 2013
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Very interesting links.