Health is in Our Hands
Children of Behram. Photo by Anu.
Published in SIMSR’s “Imprints” Magazine, July, 2006
Written by Erin Inglish
eswbindia@lists.berkeley.edu
July 8, 2006
“Diarrhea is a part of childhood,” admits a mother in the community of Behrampada. This statement exposes a sad reality for the children of the estimated 175,000 residents of this Bandra East slum. What this mother does not know is that every year over 1.5 million people die from diahrreal diseases—often resulting from poor drinking water quality—and of these deaths, an estimated 90% are children under the age of five (WHO/UNICEF). With this said, she is also unaware that she has the power to reverse this trend; she has the power to save her child’s life. A year ago this August, a group of students from SIMSR were invited to join a small health project in the community of Behrampada aimed at helping families understand that water-transmitted diseases are preventable and avoidable through better hygiene habits, access to safe drinking water and safe water storage, and improved access to sanitation.
Soon they would become co-leaders of an international effort that would bring together students from all departments of Somaiya Vidyavihar, students from an NGO from the University of California at Berkeley in the USA, and most importantly, women and mothers in Behrampada.
The project, titled Haat MeN Sehat, or “Health In Hand,” started two years ago after the Behrampada Mahila Mandals and their partner organization, the Committee for Right to Housing (CRH), invited students from Engineers for a Sustainable World—Berkeley to work with them on finding a solution for the drastically contaminated drinking-water. Since the initial meeting, the project team has employed participatory methods for interacting with people both in Behrampada, as well as in the greater Mumbai area, in an attempt to mobilize and engage stakeholders on all levels. Their philosophy behind field work embodies community-centered interventions that make a sustainable impact—that empower the community takes health into their own hands.
The project’s piloted intervention combines both technology and health education into one deliverable package. The initial investigation into the water quality in Behrampada measured bacteria levels in both the lane pipes, as well as the household storage containers. Unsurprisingly, the lane pipes become contaminated during the hours where they experience little or no pressure, and are thus infiltrated by sewage-contaminated water from the gutters. However, the household storage containers show even higher levels of bacteria, suggesting that the water becomes re-contaminated due to poor handling and storage habits (i.e., dipping a hand and cup into a vessel to retrieve water). This finding reinforces the importance of improving hygiene and water handling habits in the community, hence the project’s launch of the education program that emphasizes hygiene and other health topics.
What, one might ask, can the community do to improve their water quality? Replacing and maintaining the lane pipes would be a nearly impossible, expensive and labor intensive solution, and should be proposed for the long-term. But in the mean time, these underserved communities deserve and demand a method for treating water that is all together safe, affordable, effective, and meets certain aesthetic criteria that has been set by Behrampada residents. After a thorough investigation of the available water treatment methods on the market in Mumbai, the project team found that no method was both effective and fiscally accessible to members of Behrampada. In response, the ESW-B team developed a system that combines chlorination, one-micron filtration, and safe water storage that is effective against a full spectrum of pathogens, as well as recontamination. Last summer, in 2005, the California-based team presented the project to a group of management and engineering students at SIMSR, sharing their ideas, treatment system design, community interaction experiences, and project progress up until that point.
Seeing an opportunity to work with a local underserved community, to put to work lessons learned in the classroom, and to share this experience with an international project team, students from SIMSR have formed a partnership with ESW-B and are now working side-by-side on this effort. The international Haat MeN Sehat project team currently continues to improve the treatment system design and performance, optimizing flow rate, user-friendliness, lifetime expectancy of parts, simplicity in the construction process, as well as marketability. SIMSR’s students bring their focus on management and marketing research to the project, and are leading both of these branches as the project moves into the next phase. Currently eight treatment units are installed in community households where the women have attended the workshop series on health, hygiene and safe drinking water, and the systems are under close scrutiny for performance and durability. Within six months, 30 units will be sold to workshop-attending families. The project team is researching possible models for officially introducing the Haat MeN Sehat treatment systems as a profitable enterprise for entrepreneurs in Behrampada. Since the units are made from entirely locally available materials, after proper training and under careful quality control, members of Behrampada may be presented with an opportunity to generate an income from the sale of the units.
What sets this technological intervention apart from other initiatives is the intended introduction of the units in tandem with the education program. For, as suggested by the higher levels of contamination found in household water supply when compared to the tap from which the water was collected, a clean water supply is only part of the solution—the education program is the pivotal base of the health intervention.
Last winter, the first phase of cooperative work begun as students from both SIMSR and UC Berkeley built Haat MeN Sehat treatment systems, met with local funding organizations, and conducted the educational workshop series in Behrampada. During their thirty days together, the project management transitioned from the American organization Engineers for a Sustainable World—Berkeley (ESW-B) to a partnership of both ESW-B and SIMSR students. One of the main focuses of the summer 2006 phase has been to institutionalize the project on the multidisciplinary campus of Somaiya Vidyavihar and the Rotary chapters in Mumbai. In order to simultaneously expand the project while maintaining quality work, the students on the Haat MeN Sehat team will work side-by-side with the women leaders of the Behrampada community in both the planning and implementation processes.
Together with the support of faculty at Somaiya Vidyavihar, the Haat MeN Sehat Project will continue to plan and carry out year-round field-work in Behrampada in order to maintain consistent presence and fluid progress. Positive response from the Behrampada community suggests that the program and treatment system can be introduced to other areas over time. Behrampada is only one of hundreds of communities in Mumbai plagued by a similar—yet sadly avoidable—situation. However, there is hope; for health, after all, is in our hands.
More information about the Haat MeN Sehat Project: Health Hygiene and Safe Drinking Water in Behrampada, Mumbai, can be found at dsd.lbl.gov/BWC/mumbai. Please contact Arvind Sadasivan (SIMSR candidate, 2007), the Mumbai-based project coordinator with any inquiries: arvindsadasiv@gmail.com.