The prevalence of open defecation kills hundreds in Ghana every year, making the   practice whereby people relieve themselves in undesignated places one of the deadliest in the country.

In 2015,Ghana was ranked second after Sudan in Africa for open defecation, with 19 percent of its population resorting to the sanitation practice deemed the riskiest of all.

While open defecation perpetuates diseases such as cholera, which killed 247 people in 2014, access to household toilet facilities in the country remains limited to 18 percent of households in urban areas and 9 percent in rural areas.

  In Ghana,5 million, which is 15 percent of the population, has access to household toilet facilities.

Thus, the country is in a race against time to the national goal of an Open-Defecation-Free (ODF) Ghana by 2020.This is linked to the West African dramatically lagging behind the rest of the continent in terms of sanitation coverage.

Subsequently, the media, humanitarian agencies and Government of Canada, have joined hands to increase awareness on the dangers of open defecation so as to improve the health and socio-economic development of the country.