Improving sanitation in ghana-role of sanitary biogas plants

This study assesses the state of sanitation in Ghana from a global perspective and discusses policies and strategies for improving sanitation in Ghana. It outlines milestones of biosanitation programmes in Ghana, highlighting socio-cultural, technical and environmental challenges facing dissemination of sanitary biodigesters. The state of twenty sanitary biogas plants at various locations in Ghana is captured and problems and complaints from users are discussed. This study recommends the linking up of public toilets with biogas (anaerobic treatment) digesters as a way of improving communal hygiene and combating hygiene-related communicable diseases including cholera and dysentery. This study, however, cautions that such a project should come into gear only after solution to technical challenges such as inappropriate designs of latrines, inlet channels of biodigesters and effluent disposal systems are found. Social-cultural challenges such as the use of digested slurry in agriculture and irrigation and the use of gas for cooking must also be addressed. This study advocates for the development of a national biosanitation programme aimed at disseminating standardized sanitary biogas plants in Ghana with active involvement of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies. © Medwell Journals, 2010.