World Water Day 2021: safe drinking water is a LifeSaver

For this year’s World Water Day (22^nd March), we explore the theme of valuing water. This is something which has been clearly illustrated by the installation of one of our C1 water filtration solutions in Ubena Primary School in Tanzania. Since the installation in 2019, the students, teachers and wider community have experienced the value of access to safe water first hand. Student attendance rates and academic grades have dramatically improved, rates of infectious water-borne diseases have dropped and the money and time saved by having easy access to drinking water has allowed for further investment into the students’ education.

At LifeSaver, we believe everyone should have access to clean water and over the next three months we plan to install a further eight C1 filter solutions in Tanzania, in partnership with African Aqua Solutions. The first installation will be at the secondary school connected to Ubena Primary School.

In Tanzania, 24.6 million people still live without clean water and it’s estimated that the country spends 70% of its health budget treating preventable water, sanitation and hygiene related diseases. Despite this investment, 4,000 children under the age of five die as a result of waterborne diseases and diarrhoea each year. A lack of proper toilet facilities means that water easily becomes contaminated but, as it’s often impossible to tell just by looking at it, people have no way of knowing whether the water they are collecting is safe to drink.

In addition to the health risks, women and girls are usually responsible for collecting water for their household and often have to walk for miles in order to find a water source. This time spent collecting water means they are unable to attend school, preventing them from gaining the education needed to increase their employment prospects and break the cycle of poverty.

In the first year following the C1’s installation, Ubena Primary School moved into the top ten schools in the region and is now in the top three. Student attendance has been transformed, with the school now achieving a 96% attendance rate. Students are also more productive in the classroom as they are not spending their time outside of school collecting water for their household and, thanks to the fact that the school provides an additional litre and a half of purified water for each child to take home and share with their family per day, parents are incentivised to send their children to school. By sending this water home with students, the rates of infectious diseases caused by the absence of safe drinking water, such as cholera and typhoid, have also decreased in the wider community.

Now they have access to clean drinking water, teachers and students at the school no longer have to purchase buckets of water and this has allowed for these funds to be re-allocated to more enriching and constructive activities. Plus, as teachers are now less likely to suffer from waterborne diseases themselves, they are more able to invest their time fully into the education of their pupils.

Our C1 water filtration solutions can purify up to an impressive 500,000 litres of water at the turn of a tap. Its ultra-filtration technology removes a minimum of 99.99% of dangerous viruses, bacteria and cysts from contaminated water without the requirement for power or chemicals, making it a great solution for areas where resources are limited. The C1 simply requires water to be stored at a height of 2 metres in order to generate enough pressure for the untreated water to pass through the ultra-filtration cartridge.

To find out more about the C1 installation at Ubena Primary School, please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXsID8d3x5c