Women’s saris may save lives in Pakistan - 27.08.2010

 

The colourful garment, the sari, which is worn by the majority of women in South-East Asia may be a powerful tool in the fight to save the victims of the floods in Pakistan from life-threatening cholera infections. Research from Bangladesh has shown that filtering polluted water through an old used sari almost removes the cholera bacteria and thereby reduces the incidence of cholera substantially. This simple and low-tech solution may be of great importance to people’s health and survival in remote areas hit by floods.

Pakistani women’s cotton saris can be used to filter the water to remove dangerous – potentially deadly – cholera bacteria from the water so that it can be used as drinking water.

 

"The flooding has contaminated the drinking water with organisms that cause diseases such as cholera”, says Anders Dalsgaard, professor at LIFE - Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen. For a large number of years he has been demonstrated through DNA fingerprint techniques how potentially toxic cholera bacteria spread between countries and continents during epidemics.

 

"It is important that the families who now - and for a long time into the future - risk being infected with cholera and who are desperately looking for clean water, are provided with some easy, cheap, low-tech solutions that can save their lives. A simple sari, which is often close at hand, may prove very useful", continues Anders Dalsgaard.

 

Folded 4 – 8 times it is a fine-meshed filter

The sari cloth must be folder 4-8 times and used as a sort of fine-meshed filter, says professor Anders Dalsgaard from LIFE- Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen.

 

"The cholera bacteria are often attached to blue-green algae, and they will easily be caught by the sari cloth. It will thereby be possible to filter out up to 99 per cent of the cholera bacteria", he continues.

 

Must dry for a few hours

The sari should preferably be old and washed out because frayed fibres are better at catching the microorganisms. After a short while, the sari can be used again, either on the body or for filtering water. It needs to dry in the sun for a few hours to be free of bacteria.

 

This technique can also filter out other particles and unwanted parasites from the water which is a great advantage in areas with many water-borne disease organisms.

Improvement of the drinking water quality just before the water is drunk has shown to be the best strategy to prevent the transmission of waterborne diseases. A large number of methods to cleanse the water chemically or by means of chlorine tablets or various filtration apparatuses have become available in developing countries in recent years.

 

Anders Dalsgaard is also a central player in one of LIFE’s strategic research initiatives, the VIVA Water Research Initiative. He carries out research into the prevention of water-borne and food-borne diseases. He is involved in projects in Africa which test the ability of citrus fruits to fight cholera bacteria. The tests have shown that the very low pH values of the juice and special compounds in the rind of the citrus fruits kill the cholera bacteria. Limejuice thus has the same effect as chorine tablets and may be a low-tech supplement to sari filtration.

 

Not yet implemented in development programmes

The use of the sari as water filter is, however, still a relatively unknown solution and not implemented into development programmes.

 

If this method is to become a success, the message must be communicated extensively out to both international relief organisations and local NGOs working with sanitation and drinking water. Pakistan is an obvious place to start, says Anders Dalsgaard.

 

For more information, please contact professor Anders Dalsgaard at tel +45 35 33 20 27 or by e-mail .