We've been reading...

In today's special Blog Action Day edition of We've Been Reading, we focus on Water. As usual, simply click on the title of each article to read more. If you have any articles you'd like to share, please do.

Youth lead the sanitation charge in Ghana
UNICEF -- They say it takes a village to raise a child. But children themselves are equally capable of important work, as UNICEF Ghana's new hand washing project, known as "IWASH," is proving. Directly targeted at children of primary school age, the program is yielding results that are already rippling throughout entire villages. Worldwide, diarrhea remains the second leading cause of death among children under the age of five. Nearly one in five child deaths—about 1.5 million each year—is due to diarrhea. The illness kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. More shocking even than these staggering statistics is the fact that deaths from diarrhea are easily preventable...

SA, Ghana share ideas on water provision
Sowetan Live -- Parts of Africa do not suffer from water scarcity as South Africa does, but there is a lot to learn in delivering clean, potable water to the public. Rand Water, which services about 12 million people in Gauteng, this week hosted Ghanaian minister of water resources Alban Bagbin. He was in the country to learn about and share ideas on how best to deliver water to the people. Rand Water CEO Percy Sechemane said it costs them R8 billion a year to deliver blue drop water, top quality water, to Gauteng. Though water was not a scarce resource in Ghana, Bagbin admitted that servicing it to the required quality and getting it to the citizens was an expensive exercise that needed improvement.

Melcom donates to Okyenhene's sanitation project
Ghana News Agency -- Melcom Ghana Limited, a nationwide retail outlet, on Thursday presented a number of items in aid of the Okyenhene's nationwide campaign on sanitation, dubbed "Operation Cleaner and Healthier Communities"... Mr Richmond Oduro-Kwarteng, Public Relations Officer of Melcom Ghana Limited, said the Okyenhene's initiative would help achieve sustained and improved water and sanitation in the communities. He said a healthy body and mind served as the greatest platform for the development of individuals and the nation as whole adding that a healthy life depended on the way the individual kept the environment in which he found himself.