WateROAM

Worldwide, contaminated drinking water is the single largest cause of illness in rural and disaster-affected communities. Most of such communities drink directly from natural sources of water such as ponds, lakes and rivers for their daily needs. Unfortunately, a large part of these water bodies harbour bacteria and virus which cause illnesses such as Cholera, Ghardia, chronic diarrhoea, or even premature death.

This waterborne illness crisis has been challenging to address because centralized water distribution networks are often unavailable to rural communities due to high capital costs and low population densities. Water pipeline infrastructure takes a long time to build and the process is often slow due to political and economic conditions. Even in areas with adequate water treatment, disasters such as floods, typhoons and earthquakes can cripple existing water infrastructure. There is therefore a huge cost - in time, money and health - for these communities in obtaining clean drinking water when they resort to other alternatives such as bottled water, which is expensive to transport and costly to purchase, or ceramic and biosand filters which have low water quality and slow water flow rates.