Ghana, 17 other African countries lose $5.5b yearly to poor sanitation – Word Bank

Eighteen African countries have been found to be losing around $5.5 billion every year as a result of poor sanitation.

A new report by the World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) according to a press release issued by the Bank today April 16, 2012 says the countries also suffer annual economic losses between 1 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP.

The study, the Bank says covered Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda,  Zambia and Ghana.

“The 18 African countries represented in this study account for 554 million people—that’s more than half of Africa’s population. This is powerful evidence for Ministers that their countries will not be able to grow sustainably without addressing these costs,” ,” says WSP Manager Jaehyang So.

The desk study, titled ‘Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa’, found that the majority of these costs to production come from annual premature deaths, including children under the age of five, due to diarrheal disease.

“Nearly 90 percent of these deaths are directly attributable to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene,” the report noted.

Other significant costs were productivity losses from poor sanitation, and time lost through the practice of open defecation, it added.

According to the report, adverse impacts of inadequate sanitation that are likely to be significant, but difficult and expensive to estimate, include the costs of epidemic outbreaks; losses in trade and tourism revenue; impact of unsafe excreta disposal on water resources; and the long-term effects of poor sanitation on early childhood development.

Citing the Africa country reports, part of the Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI) launched initially in East Asia in 2007, the report said, it also found that open defecation alone accounts for almost $2 billion in annual losses in the 18 countries. Lacking alternatives, more than 114 million people still defecate in the open in the 18 countries surveyed; this is about half the number of people on the continent who have no latrine at all and almost 24 percent of the total population in the countries surveyed, it added.

The report says, eliminating the practice of open defecation in these countries would require about 23 million toilets to be built and used.

“Open defecation costs more per person than any other type of unimproved sanitation. Time lost to finding a discrete location to use the toilet accounted for almost $500 million in economic losses.  Women shoulder a huge proportion of this cost as they spend additional time accompanying young children or sick or elderly relatives,” the report says.

Meanwhile, a GNA news report citing a study from the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) indicated that poor sanitation costs Ghana $290 million each year representing 1.6 per cent of National Gross Domestic Product.

It said whilst Open Defecation costs Ghana $79 million per year, $215 million was lost each year due to premature death from poor water, sanitation and hygiene.

The report quotes Mr Kweku Quansah of the EHSD saying that the country loses $19 million each year in access time for open defecation, explaining that “each opened defecation person spends 2.5 days every year finding an obscure place to hide leading to economic losses”.

According to the report he said $1.5 million was lost each year due to productivity losses whilst $54 million was spent each year on health care treating diarrhoea and its consequences for other diseases like respiratory infections and malaria.

Approximately, 13,900 Ghanaian adults and 5,100 children under five years die each year from diarrhea and nearly 90 per cent of which is directly attributed to sanitation and water problems.

The study, the report said also revealed that 4.63 million Ghanaians have no latrines at all and defecate in the open whilst 16.34 million of Ghanaians use unsanitary or shared latrines.

“With the current sanitation coverage of 14 per cent and the current negative practices of open defecation, it would be difficult to meet the Millennium Development Goal on Sanitation, which has a target of 54 per cent if attitudes were not changed,” Mr Quansah was reported to have said.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi