10 March 2011

Safe Water Means Better Health in Ghana, Cambodia

A Pure Home Water representative demonstrates how to assemble a household water filter at a school in Tamale, Ghana.

By Kathryn McConnell
Staff Writer

Washington — According to the World Health Organization, diseases associated with unsafe water claim the lives of about 2 million people worldwide every year, most of them children under the age of 5. But recently, low-tech ceramic water filters have been saving lives and making people healthier in Ghana and Cambodia.

Peter Adagwine sold thousands of such filters — including one to his uncle — while working for a social enterprise, Pure Home Water, in northern Ghana.

“My uncle enjoys this simple tool that provides clean water for his family,” said Adagwine, now a student in international development at Brandeis University in Boston. “The filters have saved children who in the past had a lot of waterborne disease.”

Adagwine became involved in improving his community’s water in 2006 when he met Susan Murcott, who works two months a year in Ghana leading teams of graduate engineering and business students. (Murcott now teaches civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology near Boston.) The year before, with local partners and funding from the Conrad Hilton Foundation, Murcott founded Pure Home Water (see organization website) as a nonprofit organization.

Pure Home Water initially purchased filters from a manufacturer in Ghana’s capital, Accra. It sold them at two prices based on a customer’s income level. It distributed them free during a flood in 2007 and a guinea worm outbreak in 2008 through aid groups such as UNICEF. In 2008, the venture started selling the filters using the brand name “Kosim,” which means “pure water” in the local language.

A Cambodian mother holds her daughter, who is drinking water cleaned by the “Rabbit” ceramic water filter inside the plastic jug.

Each filter consists of a porous ceramic pot that holds around eight liters of water. The pot fits inside a larger plastic receptacle with a spigot. The filter screens out bacteria, protozoa, guinea worm microorganisms and other solids from water drawn from streams, ponds and wells. The filters come with a cleaning brush and assembly instructions. With proceeds from sales, the enterprise was able in 2010 to build its own filter factory in Tamale, a city of 250,000 people. Since its beginning, the enterprise has provided jobs for 20 people and its filters have benefited 100,000 people.

Each filter costs around $18. “We make financing provisions available for all categories of people” so that anyone who wants a filter can get one, Adagwine said. The company has one truck and two motor bikes for deliveries. It gives filters to village schools and health centers for free.

Adagwine described Pure Home Water’s approach to getting villagers to accept filters. Its representatives first identify someone in a village who can serve as a liaison between the company and the local chief. After securing the chief’s agreement to bring filters into the community, the representatives meet with community members to explain the health benefits of clean water and to teach them how to use and clean a filter.

On another continent, Hydrologic Social Enterprise makes ceramic water filters and sells them to rural families in Cambodia, where groundwater can be contaminated by human and animal waste, arsenic and saltwater. The company is a spin-off from a regional water, sanitation and hygiene program known as WaterSHED, originally funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in collaboration with the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina and local partners.

Hydrologic’s filters are easy to use and are manufactured with locally available materials, said Tom Outlaw, who heads WaterSHED-Asia. They reduce the need for women and children to collect firewood for boiling water, saving fuel and improving indoor air quality.

Since becoming a for-profit business in 2009, Hydrologic has sold about 50,000 “Rabbit” brand filters at $15 each, providing clean water to 350,000 people. In Khmer culture, the rabbit is considered a wise animal. Hydrologic promotes the filters as a wise purchase, Outlaw said.

“We used to give filters away or sell them at cost because we assumed the poor couldn’t afford to pay full price. But we’ve found again and again that people will pay more if they’re offered a quality product at a fair price,” he said. In 2010, the venture began to make filters at its new Kampong Chhnang factory. It plans to have 60 Cambodians on its payroll in 2011.

Like Pure Home Water, Hydrologic representatives first gained support from local leaders by explaining the health benefits of clean water. Because Cambodians have used ceramic vessels for centuries to store drinking water, they have adapted easily to the filters.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)