【Why Did We Start This project?】

Typhoid fever kills three lives this year alone.

 

Before we started our project, we visited the community where KAMBANG Farms & Supplies farm is located. At that time, we were shocked to see the current situation where drinking water is fetched from a soiled pond. The living conditions in the community requires to be improved.

 

Further investigation revealed that the water problem was more serious than we had initially observed.

 

Around the area where our farm is located, 400 people use the soiled pond 　for drinking water and daily use.
This year, three of the people using this pond lost their lives to typhoid fever, two of them was children.

 

Typhoid fever is transmitted by consuming contaminated water, ice, and food (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan). The number of case is particularly high in places where water and sewage systems are not installed nor maintained. If proper medical treatment is given to the patients, the death risk can be reduced. However, in areas where our farm is located, access to proper medical care is limited because the people are poor and the hospital is far away. This makes the disease more likely to become serious once infected.

↑Water used by local people for daily use

 

The infection mediated by water is not only typhoid fever in this area. Infectious diseases such as dysentery and salmonella also pose a threat. Since the pond provides water for animals (cattle, goats, sheep and pigs) as well as humans, it is easy to imagine that bacteria carried by animals infected humans through drinking water.

 

Although the number of people dying from diarrheal diseases is decreasing in Ghana by the development of infrastructure, as of 2019, diarrheal diseases kill 21.5 people per 100,000 people per year (WHO). Diarrheal diseases particularly affect children, with 16.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the 5-9 age group (WHO).

 

Why is the Government not taking action in such an imminent situation?

 

Of course, the Government of Ghana is taking some actions, but they could not take enough action because of chronically short of financial resources. In particular, in recent years, Ghana's fiscal balance of payments (as a percentage of GDP) in 2021 ranked 182nd out of 191 countries (IMF), due to the use of financial resources for COVID-19 measures.

 

Many infrastructures development is currently supported by international aid agencies and international NGOs. Many international NGOs are active in Northern Ghana, but it is difficult to cover the whole area.They are not active in the communities where our farm is located. Therefore, we are the only ones who can deliver water boreholes to the communities and keep the people from imminent threats.

 

We need your support to prevent further victims. We ask for your cooperation.

 

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Reference

IMF：MF - World Economic Outlook Databases

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/SPROLLS/world-economic-outlook-databases#sort=%40imfdate%20descending

 

WHO：THE GLOBAL HEALTH OBSERVATORY

https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates/ghe-leading-causes-of-death

 

Ministry of health, Labour and Welfare in Japan:

https://www.forth.go.jp/useful/infectious/name/name11.html