Ministry of Health urges good sanitation
Ministry of Health chief of health services Charles Mwansambo has advised people in the country to embrace community-led total sanitation (CLTS) to reduce deaths and diseases.
He said sanitation-related diseases are a burden to the country because they drain government resources; hence, adopting CLTS would promote sanitation and hygiene.
Mwansambo said this on Tuesday at Mpilipili Community ground in Traditional Authority (T/A) Makanjira in Mangochi when he presented certificates to T/A Makanjira and Sub-Traditional Authority (S/TA) Lulanga for attaining open defaecation-free (ODF) status.
“Globally, 25 percent of all deaths and 52 percent of disease burden can be attributed to sanitation-related factors. Therefore, if people commit to issues of sanitation, the risk of such burden could be reduced to minimal levels,” he said.
Mwansambo further said it is high time communities started implementing sanitation programmes on their own without waiting for officials from the Capital hill to help achieve Malawi’s ODF agenda by by 2019.
In his remarks, World Vision Malawi interim country director Chikondi Phiri urged communities to maintain and sustain the attained ODF status so that other T/As in the district and surrounding districts learn from them.
