UNICEF’s Country Director of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, David Duncan, has said that it will take Ghana 500 years to bring an end to ‘free ranging’ or open defecation.

It is expected that 1.1 billion people in rising countries, including Ghana, comfort themselves outdoors, though the practice is reflected the greatest danger to human health.

Addressing at a 2-day capacity building programme for the parliamentary press groups organized by UNICEF, Mr Duncan stated that one in every 5 Ghanaians uses Ghana as a toilet and invited for an urgent response by governments to get rid of the practice.

He said, “Under the past year, headlines have communicated of Ghana as the 7th dirtiest country in the world and then we are going back matched with other countries.

We were challenged with the fact that one in 5 Ghanaians uses Ghana as a toilet – evacuating daily in the bush, in the drains and on the beach.

The rest of the world is civilizing dramatically, but we look to be standing motionless. Under the past 25 years in Ghana, development was so slow that if we keep up this rate, it will take Ghana 500 years to be able from open defecation.

“In 15 years, between now and 2030, we need to provision over 5 million Ghanaians to stop evacuating in the open, but recently it looks like it will take 500 years if we make changes now.”

For now, the Central Regional Minister, Kweku Ricketts Hagan, described the danger to attitudes rather than a lack of government attention in resolving the problem.