Dispensers for Safe Water

12 Aug

MLC VANGUARD | Created by Evidence Action

A simple, cost-effective innovation providing millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa with access to safe water

4,000,000 Lives Impacted

Many rural areas in low-income countries lack access to formal infrastructure such as piped water; residents rely on untreated sources such as open springs and shallow wells. These are easily contaminated by human and animal waste, leading to diarrheal diseases that deprive the body of the water, salts, and nutrients needed to survive. Compounding this, families who don't have access to safe water are usually the ones who can least afford treatment when these diseases occur.

Our dispensers are free-to-use, ensuring people in need don’t have to make difficult trade-offs, and a sophisticated maintenance and supply chain ensures they are always stocked and working. Having free and reliable access to safe drinking water means people who are living on less than $5 a day are less vulnerable to diarrheal diseases. Emerging research also suggests that reducing childhood diarrhea may have a multiplier effect: by strengthening children’s immunity, safe water can prevent deaths from other diseases, making the impact on child survival even greater.

The Innovation

Diarrhea claims the lives of over 500,000 children under five each year. Most of these deaths could be prevented through safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. However, at least 785 million people lack access to a basic drinking-water service, and at least 2 billion use a water source contaminated with feces. For less than $1.50 per person, per year, Dispensers for Safe Water provides over 4 million people in rural Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi with free and reliable access to safe drinking water through our uniquely engineered chlorine dispensers.

The approach is simple: a villager goes to their usual water source, places a bucket under the dispenser, turns the valve once to dispense the correct dose of chlorine, and fills the bucket with water as they normally would. The chlorine disinfects the water during the walk home; by the time they arrive it is safe to drink for up to three days. Dispensers for Safe Water is not a one-time hardware installation; our maintenance and supply chain ensures dispensers are always working, and we engage over 54,000 volunteer 'promoters' who are elected by their communities to promote dispenser use and let us know when supplies or repairs are needed.

About Evidence Action

Evidence Action was founded in 2013 to address a big gap in the fight against poverty: many of the most promising interventions are either implemented at very small scale, or not at all. We set out to address this by building programs to scale evidence-based, cost-effective interventions to improve hundreds of millions of lives. Our model worked. In less than a decade, our Deworm the World Initiative and Dispensers for Safe Water program have grown to measurably impact over 280 million people each year. Now, our Accelerator is driving the identification and design of additional interventions that can be scaled to reach millions more.