Our project on Society

As the African saying goes, “beggared water does not quench the thirst”, that is, the human right to water is indispensable for living.

Water must be treated as a cultural and social good, not fundamentally as an economic good; besides, the way that the right to water rights is exercised must be sustainable, so this right can be exercised by future generations as well as by the current ones.

Regarding its quality for human consumption, water must be healthy (salubrious) and should not pose a health risk. The importance of water being drinkable lies in the great number of diseases it may otherwise cause, with the associated mortality rates. The following chart reflects the most common diseases due to the ingestion of untreated or contaminated water.

Worldwide around a billion people have no access to improved water sources and 2.5 billion have no access to basic sanitation facilities. This leads to diahrroeical diseases being the second largest cause of death among children younger than five, causing the death of 1.5 million children every year. Cholera takes a prominent place, being responsible for about 100 – 120 thousand deaths a year. To avoid this kind of diseases there are numerous sanitation and water treatment projects being developed by different government and non-governmental organizations. However, some studies show the effectiveness of these projects to be sub-optimal, as quite often the supply systems implanted in given areas lack the necessary means for an adequate treatment and purification, which means the supply in these areas will still be harmful. On the other hand, many of those projects are initially carried out, but after a time most of them stop working partially or completely, a problem which can easily be seen in some studies (Taylor, 2009). One of the preferred solutions being put into practice is mainly based in education and formation, academic as well as professional, about how to maintain water supply and purification systems. It must also be taken into account the vital importance of creating a back-up after the construction, as well as having maintenance and spare parts services for the systems built in order to be able to offer a sustainability which can produce a real improvement to the living conditions of millions of people.