The National Coordinator for the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) and Data Dissemination, Dr Prosper Laari has revealed that in the Savannah Region, sociodemographic data on a total of 91,710 households and 533,890 member population in 591 communities collected indicates that over 55% of the total household population fall below the national poverty line.

Addressing participants at a forum in Damongo, Dr Laari added that more male households (36.9%) fall below the extreme poverty line than female headed households (18.8%), adding further that the Savannah region has more women than men.

Dr Laari further indicated the North Gonja District, which has Daboya as the capital, has the highest extreme poverty rate of 65.8%, followed by East Gonja district with the highest poverty rate of 70.7%.

Bole district, according to Dr Laari, has the least incidence of poverty rate of 31.3%, extreme poverty rate of 13.1% and poverty depth of 4.0% which implies the poor in Bole are not as poor as the poor in the other 6 districts in the Savannah Region.

Data on 264,265 children under 18 years, according to Dr Laari, revealed that 5% were orphans with 6% teenage pregnancy rate among female teenagers and 3% females aged between 12 and 17 years were married.

The data also showed that 3500 teenage girls were not in schools due to marriage and males aged 4 to 15 years are also not in school due to lack of financial resources, lack of school facilities alongside long distances to schools.

Dr Prosper Laari further said 83% of the total population of the Savannah Region lacks access to portable drinking water with as poor as 77% lacking access to toilet facilities in the region.

He said the districts with the poorest sanitation conditions in the region include North East Gonja, East Gonja and West Gonja Municipality.

These according to him are not only disturbing but also serves as a clarion call for all the people in the Region to work towards development for the people.