By Michael Pritchard | Fri., September 23, 2:35 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A woman gets water from a public source in Port au Prince March 16, 2011. REUTERS/Kena Betancur
Michael Pritchard, CEO of Lifesaver Systems Ltd and patron of humanitarian aid event AidEx, talks about his recent return to Haiti and inhabitants’ access to clean water a year and a half on from the disaster.
The Haiti earthquake that hit in January 2010 affected an estimated three million people and left around 1.5 million homeless. More than 18 months on and communities there are still struggling to get back on their feet.
In the aftermath of the disaster, Lifesaver Systems supplied jerrycans to thousands of victims who had no access to clean water. The cans work by removing bacteria, viruses, cysts, parasites, fungi and all other microbiological waterborne pathogens from water, processing up to 20,000 litres of water.
Last month I returned to regions within Haiti that were affected by the disaster and discovered how the water purifiers were helping to improve lives.
On my return there, there was a definite sense of progress – even just the fact that there was much more order at the airport was a positive sign. This was a remarkable difference from the last time I visited Haiti earlier this year.
We visited the village of Luben where last year relief organisation Operation Blessing and health care organisation Partners in Health set up the LIFESAVER project and distributed a vast quantity of jerrycans to the town, which was ravaged by cholera. On my previous visit, I learnt how the government had told them not to drink from the river near Luben because it was the source of cholera.
The inhabitants here are unique in that the cholera has now disappeared from the village, unlike many others in Haiti. A constant problem the country battles with is lack of access to basic sanitation, with people forced to drink contaminated water and therefore developing waterborne diseases.
This problem isn’t unique to Haiti – in fact a startling 20 percent of the world’s population do not have access to drinking water. This equates to 1 billion people. The cause is multifold; rapid urbanisation means that increasing numbers of people live in urban fringe areas of shanty towns where they find it difficult to access adequate clean water and maintain sanitation. In many developing countries too, water supplies vary year on year, depending on variations in the weather. For example, the recent hurricanes that hit Haiti have triggered flooding and mudslides and have quickly contaminated water supplies again.
Compared to my last trip to Haiti, I felt more positive saying goodbye this time around and felt a great sense of optimism among inhabitants.
In an ever-changing world, it’s essential we continue to innovate in aid. I developed the Lifesaver bottle after watching the tragic waste of life caused by the lack of safe drinking water in the wake of the tsunami in December 2004.
At humanitarian aid event AidEx, taking place from 19 – 20 October, there will be several water aid suppliers exhibiting at the show so it will prove interesting to see how each of us approach the issues of supplying water aid to developing countries. I’ll also be judging the best offerings in aid concepts from both young independent designers and emergency relief manufacturers in the Aid Innovation Challenge.
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