Water Filter Project

In a country with a little less than six million inhabitants, about half of Nicaragua’s population lives in rural areas [1]. From this population, more than half of Nicaraguans work for just over a single dollar per day, meaning, that they must rely on an annual salary of a little more than $365 [2]. These families live in impoverished environments that provide a limited amount of resources, such as clean water. A recent study found that this economic and environmental poverty is highly correlated with child malnutrition, since severe malnutrition is twice as likely in households without access to clean water and sanitation [3,4].

In addition to significant economic poverty and child malnutrition, the millions of Nicaraguans who live in rural areas lack access to public healthcare [5]. In fact, if these Nicaraguans are in need of medical attention, then they have one of two options: rely on home remedies or travel long distances to overcrowded hospitals that are inadequately equipped with life-saving medical tools. For this reason, many illnesses are either neglected or are poorly treated by folk medicine that may not always cure patients. When it comes to treating illnesses caused by consuming contaminated water, this results in preventable deaths. Of particular concern, children who drink dirty water are often subjected to diarrhea, the leading cause of death in Nicaraguan children between the ages of infancy and five years of age [6]. These deaths could be minimized with efficient water filters, local medical resources, and knowledge on how to treat the most prevalent health conditions in a given community.

The UCSD chapter of Project Nicaragua seeks to address these issues through the project, Agua Pura: Water Filters for Saving Lives in Nicaragua, which seeks to send a team of ten to twenty Undergraduates to Nicaragua. The major goal of this project is to empower Nicaraguans with the knowledge and tools needed for combating malnutrition and deaths correlated with drinking contaminated water. This will be done by having our team of Undergraduates work with AMOS Health and Hope—a Nicaraguan based organization who will pinpoint a rural community of one hundred families that will benefit from the installation of one hundred free water filters into individual homes [7]. These water filters, which were developed by engineers at Aqua Clara, are made by local materials found in Nicaragua and will provide families with 40 liters of clean drinking water over the span of about ten years [8].  In addition to providing these filters free of cost, our team will help train and work with community leaders to run local health clinics that teach Nicaraguans about the importance of drinking clean water, cleaning their hands frequently, and breastfeeding to help prevent malnutrition in infants. Perhaps most importantly, we will also provide community leaders with the knowledge and medicine needed for treating common illnesses, such as diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia, so that long distances need not be traveled in order to save the lives of sick children and adults.

The benefits of this project are remarkable. By providing clean water and empowering a rural community with the knowledge they need for leading healthier lives, we are providing a very efficient means for improving their quality of life. A typical family travels an average of one hundred meters to reach a water source, but the families we adopt will be able to use their time and effort on more important activities, like working and earning more money [9]. While more than half of families in rural communities in Nicaragua do not use any water purification method, we will instill a value for clean water that will spread well after our team of students leave [10]. Notably, while the nation continues to battle the fear of the privatization of water, our water filters help families ensure a clean water supply for their family [11]. Considering that 60% of the human body, 70% the human brain, and 90% of human lungs are composed of water and that these levels are even higher in infants, instead of getting sick and potentially dying from diarrhea during the most critical years of their development, children will benefit from improved health and better nutrition [12, 13]. Indeed, a recent study found that rural Nicaraguan families that did not use water filters were up to 16% more likely to suffer from diarrhea [14]. Since water powers the capacity for one to do anything from breathing to thinking, providing clean water will ensure that the bodies of the Nicaraguans we adopt are getting the ingredient they need most in the highest quality we can provide.

We need your help. Each T-Shirt contributes to 1/3 of a water filter.

Resources:

[1,2]http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/nicaragua
[3] Studies in Family Planning  http://www.jstor.org/stable/3649625
[4,5]http://web.worldbank.org
[6]http://trade.gov/promotingtrade/westhemprosperity/nicaragua.pdf
[7]amoshealthandhope.org
[8]http://aquaclara.org/what-we-do/aqua-clara-technology/
[9]http://www.waterforpeople.org/assets/pdfs/monitoring-reports/nicaragua-monitoring-report.pdf
[10]http://www.laredvida.org/im/bolentines/PrivatizationNicaragua.pdf
[11,14]http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-698x-10-30.pdf
[12] http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html
[13] http://www.minsa.gob.ni/bns/ambiente/doctec/FiltrosCaseros.pdf
** The benefits of this cited water project resulted in a 25% decrease in the number of children who suffered from diarrhea that was related to drinking dirty water.