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Every day, diarrhoeal diseases from easily preventable causes claim the lives of approximately 5000 young children throughout the world. Sufficient and better quality drinking water and basic sanitation can cut this toll dramatically (UNICEF). Distributing untreated surface waters as drinking water is one of the causes of waterborne disease. Point of Use and municipal scale treatment schemes are two potential solutions. In recent years, centralized large-scale water treatment and supply systems have been seen as an unsustainable and expensive strategy to provide for providing safe drinking water in low-income communities in underdeveloped countries. Often, conventional Conventional technologies developed for use in the first world have often been inserted in third world settings, which lack ready access to supply chains, trained technicians, and sufficient capital. These systems so , and frequently fail prematurely and left in disrepair.
Point of Use Treatment Systems
Point of Use (POU) treatment systems became have become the favored solution for providing safe water, but the challenges of training every household, the impossible task of monitoring water quality, and high cost of replacing failed units has led to the realization that municipal scale water treatment systems provide compelling advantages. We recognize that POU solutions may be the only viable option in rural communities where piped distribution systems would be too costly or where water scarcity makes managing a distribution system difficult. The AguaClara team is proposing a corrective to the current emphasis on POU technologies where municipal scale treatment and distribution would be more economical and sustainable and would better meet the needs of the poorest members of the communities.
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