Savelugu (N/R), July 4, GNA - Water and sanitation experts have called for pragmatic measures to protect water sources from further contamination to improve the lives of people particularly those in rural communities.

The experts made the call at a workshop on: "Water initiative behaviour change", at Savelugu in the Savelugu/Nanton District on Wednesday.

The four-day workshop would focus on issues concerning water uses and help participants to understand and be able to explain behaviour change issues that confront partners and collaborators in hygiene and sanitation activities.

The West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) organised the forum, which would also enable participants to know the basic concepts of behaviour change in health promotion.

The participants are from the World Vision-Ghana, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Water Aid, the International Trachoma Initiative and the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) as well as personnel of WAWI.

Others are from the Ghana Education Service (GES), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Environmental Health and Sanitation Department and the Tamale School of Hygiene.

Mr. Sumaila Seidu Saaka, Behaviour Change specialist and a consultant for USAID and WAWI who facilitated the workshop, said poor sanitation and hygiene accounted for the unacceptably high number of deaths among children.

He said the Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP) under WAWI was the latest investment in water and sanitation initiative intended to reduce diarrhoeal diseases and improve child survival. Mr. Saaka expressed the need to practise safe faecal disposal, hand washing with soap, safe storage and treatment of water at point-of-use (POU) and other hygienic ways of staying healthy at all times. Dr Abdoul Diallo, Regional Coordinator of WAWI who is based in Bamako, Mali, called for closer collaboration among stakeholders in water and sanitation in the West African sub-region to help control water pollution.

He noted the difficulty in changing human behaviour and stressed the need for the participants to work towards changing behaviour especially, in water use to ensure the most hygienic way of using the resource.

Alhaji Ahmed Ewura, chairman of WAWI working group in Ghana, in speech read on his behalf, called on participants to share ideas on safe water and collaborate in their various activities on behaviour change. He said WAWI had, over the years, worked to implement several projects to bring water and sanitation facilities into its operational areas to improve the lives of the people.