Water

It is easy to think of water shortage as thirst. For most people the problem is a different one: there is water, but it is contaminated. Families know the water makes their children ill, and they drink it anyway, because the alternative is not to drink.

Unsafe water carries bacteria and parasites. It causes diarrhoea that drains a small child of fluid in less than a day, typhoid fever, cholera and infections that settle in the kidneys. A child who is ill every other week does not go to school. A mother who spends the morning fetching water from an open well has no time for the work that supports the family.

This is not a problem that needs an invention. It needs a pump in the right place. A hand pump drilled down to clean groundwater removes the whole chain of causes — and it stays there for years after the person who paid for it has forgotten they did.