LifeStraw Firebox

 

'Diarrhoea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined': How the LifeStraw hopes to save millions of lives.
'An estimated 884 million people in the world, 37 per cent of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa, still use unimproved sources of drinking water.
'Lack of access to safe drinking water contributes to the staggering burden of diarrhoeal diseases worldwide, particularly affecting the young, the immunocompromised and the poor. Nearly one in five child deaths - about 1.5 million each year - is due to diarrhoea. Diarrhoea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined .
'In many rural and urban areas of the developing world, household water-quality interventions can reduce diarrhoea morbidity by more than 40 per cent. Treating water in the home offers the opportunity for significant health gains at potentially dramatic cost savings over conventional improvement in water supplies, such as piped water connections to households.

'Water filters have been shown to be the most effective interventions amongst all point-of-use water.
treatment methods for reducing diarrhoeal diseases.
'The Cochrane review demonstrates that it is not enough to treat water at the point-of-source; it must also be made safe at the point-of-consumption. LifeStraw® and LifeStraw® Family are both point-of-use water interventions – truly unique offerings from Vestergaard Frandsen that address the concern for affordably obtaining safe drinking water at home and outside.

'These complementary safe water tools have the potential to accelerate progress towards the MDG target of providing access to safe drinking water, which would yield health and economic benefits; thus contributing to the achievement of other MDGs like poverty reduction, childhood survival, school attendance, gender equality and environment sustainability.'

Now available to buy online via Firebox, the 22cm-long LifeStraw was originally developed by Danish manufacturers in 2005 as a solution to the devastating problem of unsafe drinking water in the Third World, where one child dies every 15 seconds as a result of drinking dirty water.

That year it was named Best Invention of 2005 by Time Magazine and Invention of the Century by Gizmag, and in 2006 it was heralded by the New York Times as 'a water purifier that could save lives'. Forbes Magazine called it 'one of the ten things that will change the way we live'.
The straw's powerful purification pipe removes 99.9999 per cent of water-borne bacteria plus many other parasites, including E-coli, campylobacter, vibrio cholerae, pseudomonas aeruginosa, shigella and salmonella.
And it will safely filter at least 1000 litres of water. (There are only about 13 in your toilet cistern, so plenty to go around.)