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Water-related diseases account for over 80% of all deaths in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), each year approximately 4 billion cases of diarrhea result in 2.2 million deaths worldwide, most of which occur among children under the age of 5. It is estimated that a 50% reduction in the number of diarrhea cases can be achieved with improvements in water supply and sanitation. |
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So how does one go about addressing this problem? Clearly, building water treatment plants to produce an adequate supply of potable water is the solution, but such projects require a great deal of money and, even when built, tend to fail due to lack of maintenance. So, increasingly, there is recognition that small-scale projects and point-of-use disinfection using appropriate technology must be part of the answer.
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In rural communities and impoverished tenements around the world most residents are faced with the challenge of obtaining non-potable water from remote sources (such as a river, tank, spring, or well), and those who are fortunate enough to have running water often find that the supply is intermittent at best. Therefore, most families store water in order to have enough for cooking and other necessities. It is a way to make this stored water potable that must be found. One way to do it, is to provide users with a way to disinfect water at home. |
Dr. Pedro Bernal, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, is implementing a project that provides villagers with an affordable, family-based, and technologically simple water purification system that allows them to do just that. The distribution of the filters and the necessary sanitation education takes place through the system of community health promoters of the Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC) in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The project is sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the South's Environmental Programs Division, Rollins College, and a number of churches throughout Central Florida.