Sanitation attitudes of urban dwellers and their influence on sanitation practices in Central Region of Ghana

The campaign for improved sanitation is increasingly threatened as people's attitudes seem not to promote proper sanitation practices. The study examined attitudes of urban dwellers in some communities in Central Region of Ghana towards sanitation and their influence on sanitation practices. A cross sectional survey research design was adopted for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 360 inhabitants in three urban communities. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. A significant number of respondents (76.4 %) had good attitudes towards sanitation whilst 58.0 % of respondents had good standard of sanitation practices. About half of the respondents (49.8 %) disposed of their solid waste daily through open dumping and three out of every ten persons disposed of their solid waste through open burning. Respondents' attitudes towards sanitation weakly influenced their sanitation practices (r = 0.058, p = 0.269). This is because respondents' attitudes towards sanitation contributed only by 5.8% in their sanitation practices. The findings of the study led to a conclusion that the high level of sanitation attitudes among urban dwellers in some communities in Central Region of Ghana could not be translated into actual practice. There was a gap between respondents' attitudes towards sanitation and their standard of practices. It is recommended that the Central Regional Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate should embark on a comprehensive campaign on health benefits of good sanitation practices and enforce a more robust environmental sanitation approach and health education to help translate the high sanitation attitudes among urban dwellers into actual practice.