Residents Mepe-Avetakpo Share Contaminated Water With Animals Amid Health Danger

Residents of Mepe-Avetakpo, a farming community in the Ho West District of the Volta Region have appealed to the government and benevolent organisations to provide them with potable drinking water.

The lack of access to potable water has become a significant challenge, forcing residents to compete with animals to access water which poses serious health risks in the community.

The community, which relies heavily on agriculture and animal rearing, is struggling to access clean drinking water, forcing residents to abandon their economic activities and trek for about 3 kilometres daily in search of water for domestic purposes.

Residents engage in a daily battle with animals to access a contaminated water source, highlighting the dire need for clean drinking water.

 The community's only source of water is a dam where humans and animals compete for access risking the spread of waterborne diseases.

During a visit of the Ghanaian Radar to some duged dams and water sources of Mepe-Avetakpo, it was observed that residents and animals were struggling for water for their domestic purposes.

A resident, Madam Mavi Aku Avetsogbe
 lamented the lack of potable drinking water in the community, saying that battling with the animals had dire consequences on their health and livelihood.

She explained that the situation had been exacerbated by the lack of an alternative source of water, exposing them to health risks and hurting their livelihood.

"We are forced to share this unwholesome water with animals, this is unacceptable so we are pleading with everybody to help us with boreholes or even pipe-borne water,” she said.

She added that the distance to access water in the community was not helping them to do their household chores, saying that residents became tired after fetching water from the dam.

Age-old challenge

Another resident, Emmanuel Kofi Atamodzi complained that they had been battling with animals for water since founding the community in decades and nothing had been done about it, adding that "the duged dams in the community are polluted by no more functioning."

She explained that water was the main challenge in the community and “that has affected the business that some of us are running in the area because the water is not clean enough to perform some domestic chores.

"If we are not careful, community members will have to contend with diarrhoea and stomachache which would disturb our daily activities," she said.

Togbe Kwasi Amedor III, acknowledged that the water challenge had been in the community for a long time. 

All efforts to reach the District Chief Executive for Ho West District and MP of the Ho West Constituency,  to ascertain what had been done about the issue proved futile.

However, current Ho West District Health Director in charge of public health within the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Mr George Nyarko has publicly confirmed that the main cause of communicable skin disease epidemic which affected hundreds of residents in Mepe Avetakpor and its surrounding communities was as a result of the water pollution.

According to him, lack of access to potable drinking water is a significant factor in the outbreak of communicable skin diseases including in areas like Mepe Avetakpor and its adjoining communities, as contaminated water can transmit various pathogens.

In Mepe-Avatakpor, residents and animals share the same water sources, which can lead to challenges in water quality and accessibility.

He pointed out that a couple of weeks ago, he has an information that some children and adults were suffering from the communicable skin disease at Mepe Avetakpor and its surrounding communities.

He said, when his attention was drawn to 
the problem, he quickly assigned some field health workers to these areas to access the situation so that his outfit would prepare fully to ensure a mass medical care for affected victims.

According to Mr Nyarko, when his field health workers came back to office, they reported that the diseases are redworm and yaws.

"Red worm disease" in the context of marine life, specifically oysters and mussels, is caused by the parasitic copepod Mytilicola intestinalis, which lives in their intestinal tract, and can cause poor growth, tissue damage, and even mortality. 

"Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones, and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum pertenue," Mr Nyarko explained in an interview with Onua Television on Wednesday April 9, 2025 monitored by this news outlet.

According to him, after a preliminary investigation and found out the real cause of the skin disease epidemic, his outfit has organised themselves with the necessary materials and medicines to go to the affected communities to start a mass medical treatments three days ago.

He reaffirmed that so far about ten (10) communities within the Ho West District in the Volta Region were adversely affected, reaffirming that "our medical workers were still at these affected communities giving mass medical treatment to affected victims."

He pointed out that although some of these affected areas are within the Ho West District in the Volta Region, many of them traditionally fall  under the Mepe Traditional Area in the North Tongu District.

"In fact these ten (10) affected communities administratively falls under Ho West District,but you may think that some of these affected communities were under the North Tongu District of the Volta Region because the sub-chief of Mepe Gbavie-Dekume DivisionalClan, Togbe Kwasi Amedor III who raised an alarm over the outbreak of the communicable skin disease epidemic from Mepe Traditional Area under North Tongu District," Mr Nyarko explained.