Breathe Adentan Campaign takes clean air message to Frafraha Community SHS

The Breathe Adentan campaign has engaged staff and students of the Frafraha Community Senior High School to educate and raise awareness about one of the Municipality’s most persistent environmental health hazards: open burning of household waste. In 2023, open waste burning caused over 32,000 deaths nationwide, according to the 2025 State of Global Air report. It’s Ghana’s second-leading risk factor for death after high blood pressure, with household pollution from solid fuels and waste making up about two-thirds of these deaths.

In Adentan Municipality, a third of households using waste collection still burn excess waste in dug-out pits. This is not just a distant issue; it appears as household smoke, children’s coughs, and worsening asthma cases. About one in three households with regular waste collection still burns waste instead of waiting for pickup.

Each fire is a decision with lasting consequences beyond the smoke. The engagement aims to have students, who are future leaders, pledge to champion clean air under the campaign’s rallying call “The ‘borla’ you burn, your family breathes.” Change must start with young people, not just adults, as they carry habits into future homes. Students are messengers; they move between classrooms and homes, bringing what they learn to others.

Engaging schools is a strategic effort that plants the seeds for today’s students to become tomorrow’s household decision-makers, community leaders, and Breathe Adentan Ambassadors of Clean Air long after the campaign ends. The engagement brought together partners from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Breathe Cities Accra, and SCYCLES Ghana to discuss with students the health and environmental impacts of burning refuse in neighbourhoods, a common practice despite regular waste collection services. The Team Lead for the campaign, Dr Vincent Kyere, said that “this crisis differs from many public health emergencies because it is largely self-inflicted and within our power to end.

Unlike distant pollution, open waste burning is a local, reversible act. The solution is not only for policymakers but also for each household deciding whether to burn or wait, to separate waste or set it ablaze. Breathe Adentan aims to empower residents by providing awareness and alternatives to solve problems they alone can fix.” The Frafraha Community SHS engagement is the first in a series …