Development of low cost point-of-use (POU) interventions for instant decontamination of drinking water in developing countries

Abstract

The risk of consuming contaminated water is ever present in developing countries, at home, while travelling outdoors or during natural calamities. Availability of different interventions which can decontaminate water at any place can help to reduce the incidence of waterborne diseases. We describe development of three portable water disinfection interventions based on controlled release of chlorine in the form of a single use stirrer, a multi-time use pen for disinfecting a glass of water and a multi-time use stick for disinfecting a bucket full of water. The performance of each prototype over its usable life was studied against a spiked culture of E. coli ATCC 11229 and MS2 bacteriophage and against coliform bacteria present in a contaminated water. The results demonstrate that all three interventions were capable of reducing bacterial and viral contaminants in the range of 4–6 log10 and thus can be considered as highly protective as per the WHO categorization of household water treatment technologies. Additionaly these interventions are able to reduce coliform bacteria present in a highly polluted non-potable water in the range of 2–4 log10 and can be considered protective as per the same WHO standard. The technology can be made available at low cost and has the potential to benefit a large number of population relying on unsafe sources of drinking water.