Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

In coastal Bangladesh, as in many other places, rainwater is collected from rooftops and stored in large cisterns for use during the dry season (four to six months). It is often contaminated during collection and microbes proliferate during storage, causing health problems for millions. This Enhanced Solar Disinfection (eSODIS) project combines interventions in a novel way to minimize microbial growth during storage using sunlight, as well as treating the water using a small "just-in-time" solar-activated disinfection/dispensing module.

Dr. Shirley Tang is developing a handy device for rapid screening of diarrheal pathogens in water. The aim is to save lives in countries/areas without adequate public health infrastructure by providing individuals an easy-to-use tool to check water contamination prior to consumption.

In the Dominican Republic, an estimated 55% of deaths of children under five were attributed to diarrhea, due in part to water contamination caused by severe flooding episodes. This project is creating an affordable ceramic water filtration process involving silver and copper nanoparticles.

We address the effectiveness of a combination of water disinfectant called Takasamaji and safe drinking water storage container in reducing episodes of diarrhea in rural areas of Tanzania.

This idea integrates an expanded treatment of contaminated water using locally sourced Moringa seed, laboratory safety assessment of this treated water during pregnancy and the leaf powder from the same plant as a panacea for malnutrition in children.

This project aims to develop cost-effective point-of-use treatment technologies using abundant biomaterials for sequestering trace organics from various rivers in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. This technology is modular and complementary within established systems. If the project is successful, it will make access to clean and safe water an affordable reality.

In Bangladesh, 1 in 5 deaths (600,000 per year) occur due to groundwater arsenic, dubbed by WHO as the largest mass poisoning in history, with some 77 million people at risk. Toronto-based PurifAid will deploy new filtration units via franchised villagers who will filter and deliver purified water, perform maintenance, acquire new filters and dispose of old ones, which can be used to produce biofuels. We plan to roll out a new generation of filtration units which run on an organic by-product of the beverage industry.

This project provides a hydroelectric system for a village. Unlike conventional micro-hydro systems that regulate power with a dump load, excess power in this project goes into a water heater in each home to improve sanitation. Prototyping of the controller will be done in Calgary and the micro-hydro system in the village will be engineered by a Kathmandu group.

We are preparing an MSc program in Water Resources that will be offered to established universities in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently there is a lack of in-country programs that address the water crisis. The first programs will begin at two universities in September 2014 and it is planned to start 3 new programs per year after that until there are sufficient numbers to educate and train Africans to solve their own water problems.

Effluents from textile mills are contaminating lakes and rivers in Myanmar, Vietnam and Malaysia, rendering the water unsafe for human consumption. Delivering clean potable water to the developing world is truly a grand challenge. Innovators at the University of Waterloo aim to remove dyes and heavy metals using sustainable nanomaterials derived from biomass.