Gbungbaliga (NR), June 22, GNA - The Northern Region Small Towns Wat= er and Sanitation Project (NORST) has embarked on a programme using drama and sports to carry out health and hygiene education in the local communities. The programme aims at raising awareness, educating and mobilizing the youth and the entire communities to learn about applying improved health an= d hygiene practices in relation to water and sanitation.

The NORST Coordinator of Health and Hygiene Education Through Sports and Play (HHETPS), Miss Johanna Dalton announced this during one of its educational drama sessions at Gbungbaliga in the Yendi Municipality of Northern Region.

Miss Dalton stated that the themes around which the drama revolved included washing of hands before eating, covering of foods, filtering and treating fresh water before drinking. Others are washing of fruits before eating, keeping the environment clean, disposing of refuse dumps and drinking from boreholes among others.

The Yendi Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) Mr. Issah Zakaria expressed his appreciation to NORST for their assistance to the Municipality in the area of mechanized boreholes and sanitation.

Mr. Zakaria stated that Gbungbaliga, Bunbonayili and other communities in the Municipality were benefiting from the NORST project. He stated that a number of communities will be provided with small water system to help sustain the campaign on the eradication of guineaworm and other water borne diseases in some of the communities in the area. He said projects like the provision of boreholes, classroom blocks for schools under trees and infrastructure for health facilities were been provided by the Government and the Assembly, but added that all that the Municipality needed was peace to enable it to develop.

The MCE said the NDC Government was out to reduce poverty, provide employment, and encourage productive farming, adding that it needed the support of Ghanaians to maintain law and order.

He indicated that the self help spirit was dying in most of the communities and the people no longer wanted to undertake self-help projects to benefit from funds from the Assembly.

Mr. Zakaria stated that even when contractors are putting up projects in the communities the people did not even take interest in how the project= s were going on. He therefore called on the Assembly members and the Unit Committees to wake up and mobilize their people to undertake self help projects so that the Assembly could assist them when the need arose. He urged the people in the area to practice personal hygiene to reduce the incidence of disease outbreaks in the area.

Social inclusion and Gender Consultant of NORST, Madam Margret Mary Issaka, said that the Yendi Municipality, Karaga, Bunkpurugu/Yunyo and Nanumba North Districts among others, were benefiting from the NORST Water and educational programmes.

She said the children were also being used in the educational programme, using questions and songs on health and hygiene to create awareness so they could pass on the message on sound hygiene to their parents.