Safe’ish Water…
Posted on October 11, 2008 by Barak in Africa | No Comments
The water is clean, but the container is not. Containers like these were championed by the UN and other aid agencies as being better than open containers – the logic being that containers with a lid reduce the risk of recontamination. That may be true, but only if you can fit your hand inside to scrub them clean on a regular basis. Put a nice container like this in a dark, cool hut in the humid tropics and you have a near perfect breedng ground for bacteria, mould, and algae. Imagine how you’d feel if it a particular Brita water filter was discovered to facilitate bacteria growth, contaminating your drinking water and there was nothing you could do to fix it? You’d be outraged. Headlines would fly fast and furious and the public would demand a recall (not to mention the EPA). Brita would be forced to respond or sacrifice their reputation and lose valuable customers. Yet this is what we do to the poor every day. There will never be a product recall on the 10+ million yellow jerry cans that have flooded communities around the world; nor any of the other inappropriate solutions imposed upon people in developing countries. The nature of poverty is that the poor have no voice. If there is to be any change in this, then the only recourse is for us to have the integrity to hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard.
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