World Toilet Day 2025

Sanitation underpins public health, dignity, and economic opportunity. Yet in Ghana, the vision of safe, reliable toilets has not yet been realized. National and international assessments show that only a minority of households access basic sanitation services, while many still rely on shared facilities or practise open defecation — a burden borne most heavily by rural and northern communities.

The health impact is tangible: unsafe sanitation contaminates water and food, drives diarrhoea and other preventable diseases, and places undue strain on the country’s health services. It also undermines school attendance and livelihood opportunities. Women, girls and people with disabilities are especially vulnerable when household toilets are unavailable or insecure, exposing them to risks to their health, safety and dignity.

In a changing climate and with demographic pressures mounting, conventional sanitation approaches fall short. Flooding routinely overwhelms poorly sited or unsealed latrines, contaminating surface and groundwater; in drought-prone northern districts, unstable soils render on-site systems unsafe. Infrastructure and services must therefore be built for resilience if they are to protect health outcomes and stand the test of time.

Ghana has seen progress in places where policy, financing and community action line up, but national indicators and government strategy documents show that current levels of funding, technical capacity and maintenance regimes remain inadequate for the scale of the challenge. The Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources highlights expanding access to improved toilets and strengthening liquid waste management among its priorities — yet the policy platform must now be matched by reliable implementation capacity and sustained financing.

To convert policy into health gains, Turning Point Foundation calls for a coordinated, rights-based program of action that includes:

• Scaling household and community sanitation investments in districts with the lowest coverage and highest disease burdens, guided by disaggregated data to reduce inequity.

• Designing and deploying climate-resilient sanitation solutions — for example, raised or sealed toilets in flood-prone areas, desludging and containment systems that prevent contamination of water bodies, and off-site or ecological treatment where on-site systems fail.

• Strengthening systems: securing predictable public and private financing, building municipal and district technical capacity for operations and maintenance, expanding safe faecal-sludge management services, and enforcing standards so toilets remain functional and safe over time.

• Placing gender and inclusion at the center of sanitation design and delivery: removing barriers for women, girls and people with disabilities through thoughtful facility design, safe lighting and location in settlements, menstrual-health services and community engagement that addresses safety, access and norms.

Implementing these commitments will save lives, reduce preventable health expenditures, improve school retention (especially among adolescent girls) and unlock productivity across communities. The worldwide evidence is clear: sanitation investment delivers some of the highest returns in health and development. Ghana stands to benefit equally if the scale and quality of investment align with need.

This year’s theme for World Toilet Day , “In a changing world, one thing is constant: we’ll always need the toilet.” — speaks directly to Ghana’s situation and the urgent need to build sanitation systems that are accessible, equitable and resilient.

Turning Point Foundation therefore urges government at all levels, development partners, the private sector and civil society to adopt a unified, accountable program of action combining capital investment, recurring financing for operations, robust monitoring and inclusive community engagement. Sanitation must not be a marginal infrastructure line item but instead a cross-cutting priority for national resilience, gender equity and human development.

World Toilet Day must translate awareness into action. Ghana needs firm commitments to prioritise districts with the lowest sanitation coverage, build climate-resilient and safely desludged toilets, strengthen municipal faecal-sludge management and hold every project to clear equity standards.