In a recent article on Rotary.org titled “Water and Wellness” Diana Schoberg reports that Rotary club members have helped install 19,000 bio-sand filters in the Dominican Republic through the Rotarian-led Children’s Safe Water Alliance, reaching an estimated 100,000 people in 300 communities. For seven years, more than 200 clubs in 18 districts in Canada, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and other Caribbean countries have supported the effort, as has The Rotary Foundation, with 30 Matching Grants. In part because of the groundwork that’s already been laid, the Dominican Republic was chosen as one of three pilot countries for the new International H2O Collaboration, a worldwide alliance of Rotary International, The Rotary Foundation, and USAID.

More than 3.5 million people die from water-related diseases each year, and more than 40 percent of those deaths are due to diarrhea. (UNICEF names diarrhea as the second-leading childhood killer.) The average child in a developing country gets diarrhea three or more times a year, leading to four billion cases annually. For those who survive the dehydration, diarrhea gets in the way of nutrient absorption, which can lead to malnutrition, stunt growth and development, and reduce resistance to other infections that a child might encounter. Unsafe water – often contaminated by untreated wastewater – is a source of other infectious diseases too, such as hepatitis, typhoid, guinea worm, and cholera.

Bio-sand filters, which cost as little as US$60, reduce waterborne pathogens by more than 90 percent. With no moving parts or required maintenance, all the user has to do is pour water in. Layers of sand and gravel trap parasites, and beneficial bacteria growing on the sand kill micro-organisms.

The filters were invented in 1990 by David Manz, a former professor of environmental engineering in Calgary, Alta., Canada. When Rotarians began to apply them in the Dominican Republic, they asked a scientist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to come to the country to make sure they were using the appropriate technology. They found out that although the filters were proven effective in the laboratory, the large-scale scientific field study that would be needed to push them onto the shortlist of technologies approved by the World Health Organization had never been conducted.

The Rotarians took matters into their own hands. They contacted water expert Mark Sobsey, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and consultant to WHO, to research the filters, supported in part by $85,000 in donations from Rotary clubs and districts in Colorado and Michigan, USA.

The results were astounding. The study, carried out in 2005-06 in Bonao, found that bio-sand filters reduced diarrheal diseases by about 45 percent. A later article by Sobsey, which compared bio-sand filters with four other household point-of-use technologies, ranked them at the top. (Ceramic filters, which filter water through a clay pot, were also highly recommended.) Because the bio-sand filters are easy to use, there are no breakable parts, and the water looks and tastes good, 85 percent of households were still using them after eight years.

Manz credits Rotarians for helping to propel the technology onto the world stage. “Rotarians played a pivotal and central role, and continue to do so,” he says. “Right from their beginning, it was their response to me – they became proactive, they understood the need was there, and they had a capacity to help.”

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