The comforting sound of rain drumming on corrugated iron is punctured by the wailing and groaning of a woman, her hands raised to the heavens as if asking, “Why, oh, why?”.
Other women huddled at the entrance to the paediatric ward at Kakamega Provincial General Hospital in Kenya’s Western Province stand sheltered from the rain and stare mutely at the grief-stricken woman. The death of her baby just 20 minutes ago is not an unusual event.
It’s the rainy season and with it comes the spectre of death as cases of malaria and diarrhoeal disease spike, putting pressure on the under-resourced hospital and its overburdened staff.
In the ward a baby stops breathing on a bed shared by two others and their mothers. Junior doctor Nicholas Mitel takes his attention off a child delirious with malaria and begins resuscitation. The baby is revived. “Diarrhoea,” he says over his shoulder by way of information.
Fewer than 40% of people in Kenya’s Western Province have access to safe municipal water, says provincial head of health Timothy Olubero. The other 60%-plus rely on springs, wells and boreholes. “We have chlorine dispensers at water sources but it’s the contamination of the water on the way home that is a worry.”
Travelling on the bumpy roads one sees children drinking from or washing their hands in muddy, dirty roadside puddles on the way to school. Diarrhoeal disease is the second largest killer of Kenyans and is entirely preventable, as opposed to malaria — the largest killer.
In 2010 the World Health Organisation estimated that almost a billion people did not have access to safe drinking water. Poor-quality drinking water is the second most common contributor to the disease burden in developing countries. Hardest hit are children under five years old, with as many as 17% worldwide dying as a result of diarrhoeal disease.
The despair in the paediatric ward is in contrast with the upbeat energy at Noel Musanga’s humble home a few kilometres away. The youngest of her eight children stands open-mouthed as the family witnesses LifeStraw water-filter distributor Patrick Alukhara perform a “miracle”. He is changing muddy liquid into crystal-clear, drinkable water without having to boil it and within a few minutes. As the cup of clear water is passed around, Alukhara announces that the filter is free.
The family is one of 900 000 households across the province to benefit from the door-to-door distribution of free filters in the Carbon for Water programme initiated by Swiss company Vestergaard Frandsen, which specialises in disease-control products.
At various health centres, 4 000 drivers gather to transport 4 000 paid community health workers and distributors across 90% of the province to deliver filters to 4.3-million people.
Engineer Jean-Luc Madier says that each filter can purify at least 18 000 litres of water, which can supply a family of four with safe drinking water for at least three years. The beauty of the product — which uses nanotechnology — is that “Kenyans who get them will no longer have to boil water using wood and fuel, which is costly for both Kenyans and the environment”, Madier says. The magnificent Kakamega rainforest, home to 400 bird species, is shrinking.
The filter is also expected to reduce the number of pneumonia deaths in the province by cutting down on indoor pollution caused by cooking and heating using wood.
Vestergaard Frandsen predicts that the use of the filters will mean a reduction in carbon emissions by more than two million tonnes every year. The company invested $30-million in the project and earns carbon credits for each filter it donates. It estimates it will earn at least two million credits, which when traded on the carbon market at between $6 to $12-million a unit guarantees a tidy profit. The company has made a 10-year commitment to the Carbon for Water programme, which it estimates will eventually offset 20-million tonnes of carbon.
Founder and chief executive Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen says: “We are fortunate to have the ability to build a healthy business around saving lives. We are also fortunate to be at a time when there is neither conflict nor controversy in the business of doing good.”
Because the company gets paid only for the ability of the filters to reduce carbon emissions, Venstergaard Fransden says there is a strong incentive to reinvest the revenue back into the project — to maintain and replenish the filters and to educate people on their proper use.
After a rigorous validation process, the project is the first and largest to be registered by the Gold Standard certification scheme for voluntary emission reductions.
For Olubero the project is unique because it addresses clean water at the point of consumption. He doesn’t believe that Kenya’s government is reneging on its responsibility.
“Ten years is a good period of time for sustainability. By then we can hopefully increase the coverage of piped water to around 68%, but meanwhile the government will get evidence of the impact.”
Engineer Max Gold from Manna Energy is making sure that the programme is watertight when the time comes for evaluation and monitoring by independent, accredited auditors for the awarding of carbon credits.
To capture the necessary data, all of the 4 000 distributors have cellphones on which they record a photograph of the household, the owner’s name, GPS coordinates and the number of people living there.
Gold says: “The information is relayed via the network to the server. The data is downloaded so that all the information from one distribution is linked and plotted on a computer-generated map. We can see how the distribution is progressing.
“The connection between using the gadget and the reduction in disease is important,” says Olubero. He equates it with sleeping under a net to avoid malaria. “If you drink clean water then fewer children will die and fewer adults will be affected by waterborne diseases such as typhoid.”
It’s raining again as Musanga tells of having to take two of her children to the hospital for treatment for diarrhoea. It was a close shave that cost her emotionally and financially. She wants the filter because clean water is the difference between life and death. Musanga wants to keep as much distance as possible between herself and the paediatric ward.