Head of Strategy, Policy and Campaigns at WaterAid, Ibrahim Musah, has made an urgent call to the government to treat climate crisis as a water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issue, pointing to its immense impact on access to safe water and proper sanitation.
During an exclusive interview on JoyNews Desk on Monday, March 30, 2026, Musah elaborated saying that climate change is creating new and complex challenges within the WASH sector, making it a pressing canker for both the government and local communities. He noted that WaterAid is working closely with the National Development Planning Commission to assist five districts in the Upper East Region in incorporating climate change into their development plans.
These include Bongo District, Nabdam District, Kassena Nankana Municipal, and Kassena Nankana West District.
Referencing the National Water Policy in 2024, developed by the Ministry of Works, Housing and Water Resources, he termed it as a forward-looking framework designed to anticipate and respond to the effects of climate change.
Musah further revealed that efforts are ongoing to finalize Chana’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are expected to strengthen the country’s climate resilience strategy.
“Communities are already beginning to see the benefits of the Climate WASH Resilience Fund, which is supporting grassroots adaptation initiatives,” he said. Musah stressed that empowering communities to take part in local planning processes will be essential to ensuring that climate adaptation measures are both effective and sustainable.
The “Time to Deliver” campaign, a strategic advocacy initiative calling for urgent investment in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) services.
The campaign specifically targets a critical gap in maternal health, highlighting that currently, 45% of healthcare facilities in Ghana operate without basic access to clean water.
A Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
The urgency of the Time to Deliver petition is underscored by harrowing statistics released during the campaign launch in Accra, Bongo and other parts of the globe.
Data available shows that every two seconds, a woman gives birth in a facility lacking clean water, leading to more than one million preventable deaths of mothers and newborns globally each year due to infections.
In Ghana, the disparity is sharp: a woman in the Upper East Region is eight times less likely to give birth in a facility with running water compared to one in the Greater Accra Region.
Policy and Financing Demands
The campaign is not merely a call for awareness but a demand for funded, measurable action from the government.
Advocates are pushing for:
National Accountability: Ensuring the government honors the Ghana Presidential WASH Compact, which commits to an annual investment of US$1.7 billion to achieve SDG 6 by 2030.
Budget Prioritization: Calling on the Ministry of Finance to include dedicated WASH funding in the 2026 economic policy to improve Infection, Prevention, and Control (IPC) in health centers.
Gender-Responsive Investment: Placing women and midwives at the center of infrastructure planning, as midwives are currently forced to deliver babies without the ability to wash their hands or clean wards properly.
The public is encouraged to add their names to the global petition to hold decision-makers accountable ahead of major international water summits later this year.
“Sign the ‘Time to Deliver campaign’ petition to make access to clean water in all healthcare facilities a reality.”
For every mother should be able to bring her baby into the world somewhere with clean water. Every baby should be able to start their life somewhere safe.
]]>In a recent professional post on LinkedIn, Ghartey reflected on ongoing efforts to strengthen water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and integrated skin-NTD programming in underserved communities, part of a broader initiative supported by international partners and local health stakeholders.
“As we drive deeper into the endemic zones, the combination of clean water provision, active case finding, and capacity building is making a real difference in peoples’ lives,” Ghartey wrote, emphasizing the importance of early detection, referral systems, and community education in reducing disease burden.
The discussions around WASH and NTDs align with multi-partner programmes funded by organizations such as the Anesvad Foundation, which has supported projects aimed at expanding safe water access and hygiene practices in skin-NTD endemic areas of Ghana since 2023. These interventions focus on disease prevention, reduction of stigma, and improving quality of life, especially in rural districts where water access and sanitation have historically lagged.
Ghartey also highlighted collaborative work with municipal health workers and local assemblies to conduct community screenings and increase awareness about skin-related NTDs — a group of diseases including Buruli ulcer, leprosy and yaws that disproportionately affect the poorest communities. He noted the critical role of frontline health workers in identifying suspected cases early and facilitating treatment and referral.
These efforts mirror capacity-building initiatives across the country, where targeted training has helped boost health worker confidence and competence in diagnosing and managing skin NTDs — a key step in closing gaps in local health systems.
Beyond clinical outcomes, Ghartey stressed the broader impact of integrated health and WASH agendas in advancing public health. “Clean water is more than a service — it’s a foundation for community dignity, economic participation and resilience against preventable diseases,” he wrote.
His post has drawn attention from stakeholders within Ghana’s public health and development sectors, urging continued investment and community engagement to sustain momentum toward national and global targets for NTD control and eventual elimination.
]]>I sit in my kitchen with a household water filter that once worked beautifully for my family.
It is convenient, easy to clean, and gave us confidence in the safety of our drinking water.
Today, it is unusable—not because it failed, but because I cannot find a replacement cartridge.
The filter was introduced through an NGO pilot project. The project ended. The technology remained. But the supply of replacement cartridges did not. When I followed up, I was told the full filter units are still available for sale, but replacement cartridges are no longer stocked locally. I found them online in South Africa, but the seller does not ship to Ghana. On Amazon, they exist—but at a cost and through payment systems inaccessible to most households here.
So now, I am left with a product that is too valuable to throw away and impossible to use.
And I cannot stop thinking about the hundreds of households in communities who received this same filter through the pilot.
This Is Not a Technical Failure—It’s a Systems Failure
Pilot projects are meant to test ideas, generate learning, and inform scale. But too often, they stop at proof of concept and never cross into proof of sustainability.
We celebrate numbers:
What we under-invest in is what actually keeps solutions alive:
A water filter without a replacement cartridge is not a partial success. It is a broken system. A break in the value chain and a loss in development return on investment.
From a Community Perspective, This Feels Like Abandonment
From a community perspective, this experience feels very different from how it is framed in project reports.
Households are not testing an innovation—they are making real decisions about their health, time, and safety. When a technology is introduced, it builds trust: in the product, in the organisation, and in the broader development system.
When that technology becomes unusable, the damage goes beyond the product:
If I—with professional networks, internet access, and possible purchasing power—cannot replace a cartridge, what chance does a rural household have?
Scaling Is More Than Reaching More People
Scaling is often understood as numbers: moving from 100 households to 10,000. But true scale is about longevity not just coverage.
It asks harder questions:
If a solution cannot survive beyond a project cycle, then it is not scalable—no matter how strong the pilot results look.
The Hidden Cost of “Successful” Pilots
Across the sector, there are filters without cartridges, toilets without spare parts, handpumps without mechanics, and digital tools without long-term hosting plans. They sit quietly in homes and communities—unused reminders of good intentions that were not fully thought through. These are not small losses.
They represent:
Most importantly, they reinforce inequality—because when systems fail, it is always communities that pay the price, not implementers, not donors.
What Needs to Change
As practitioners, donors, innovators, and policymakers, we need to raise the bar on what we call success.
Before introducing a technology, we should be asking:
Sustainability cannot be an afterthought. It must be designed in from day one.
Ending Where I Began
That filter on my counter is a daily reminder that innovation without systems is fragile.
If we truly care about dignity, equity, and impact, then no household should be left with a solution that expires before the need does.
Pilots should not end with reports.
They should end with systems that work—long after we are gone.
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