Bulk water treatment unit performance: For the cameras or the community?

Richard Luff; Caetano Dorea

doi:10.3362/1756-3488.2012.006

Bulk water treatment unit performance: For the cameras or the community?

As humanitarians we must be deeply concerned about using the most effective solutions for saving lives and reducing morbidity, whilst working within reasonable cost envelopes. In this respect it is critical to place the brightest spotlight upon the practice of using bulk water treatment units (BWTU), as witnessed most recently on a massive scale in the Pakistan floods of 2010. There, as in other huge crises, many BWTUs were deployed by donors and other agencies, sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction to an overwhelming crisis. These appear to offer neat ‘plug and play’ solutions that also happen to be very media friendly. However, some of the BWTUs sent to flood-affected areas of Pakistan in 2010 demonstrate that there is an absence of appropriate selection criteria for BWTUs and the significant limitations on their use are not fully understood. Though the evidence gathered is partial, there is enough to suggest that some agencies are engaging in poor practice.

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