THE WHY

Lack of access to safe drinking water contributes to the staggering burden of diarrhoeal diseases worldwide, particularly affecting the young, the immunocompromised and the poor. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhoea. Diarrhoea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined2. Drinking contaminated water also leads to reduced personal productive time, with widespread economic effects. Approximately 43% of the global population, especially the lower-income populace in the remote and rural parts of the developing world, is deprived of household safe piped water. Thus, there is a pressing need for effective and affordable options for obtaining safe drinking water at home. Point-of-use (POU) treatment is an alternative approach, which can accelerate the health gains associated with the provision of safe drinking water to the at-risk populations. It empowers people to control the quality of their drinking water. Treating water at the household level or other point of use also reduces the risk of waterborne disease arising from recontamination during collection, transport, and use in the home, a well-known cause of water-quality degradation3. In many rural and urban areas of the developing world, household water-quality interventions can reduce diarrhoea morbidity by more than 40%4,5. Treating water in the home offers the opportunity for significant health gains at potentially dramatic cost savings over conventional improvements in water supplies, such as piped water connections to households6. Water filters have been shown to be the most effective interventions amongst all point-of-use water treatment methods for reducing diarrhoeal diseases7. The Cochrane review demonstrates that it is not enough to treat water at the point-of-source; it must also be made safe at the point-of-consumption.