Water & Hygiene
Wells Draw Water and Hope for a Better Future
20 March 2024
Over the past year, Samaritan’s Purse installed new infrastructure to improve access to clean water for 10 schools in Vietnam’s Lao Cai’s province.
Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from diseases caused by unsafe water. Samaritan’s Purse provides safe water for children, families and communities in the world’s poorest nations with wells, rainwater tanks, BioSand water filters, and training in health and hygiene practices. As a result, families can be healthy, students can learn effectively, and villages can overcome one of their biggest challenges.
Working in the Oddar Meanchey province in 2020, Samaritan’s Purse reached around 5,000 families by installing over 300 household BioSand Water Filters, digging four wells, constructing 310 latrines, and providing hygiene education.
In targeted communities, where the population lacked access to safe water, our teams established a variety of clean water activities, benefitting more than 790 families. In addition, we addressed sanitation and hygiene needs by constructing latrines and offering hygiene training to help mitigate disease, especially those that are waterborne-related.
A lack of safe, clean water, latrines and hygiene supplies brings severe illness to Cambodians, and is a barrier for school and work. Thanks to partners like you, this need is starting to be addressed.
Field tests in Cambodia showed Samaritan’s Purse BioSand Filters removed 97.8% of the potentially deadly E. Coli from the communities’ unfiltered water. These filters also reduced the turbidity or cloudiness of the unfiltered water by 82%—making it almost twice as clear as the World Health Organization’s turbidity guideline
These concrete filters use layers of sand and gravel to remove harmful micro-organisms and pollutants from water gathered in streams, lakes, or ponds. Users take the murky liquid and transform it into clean drinking water.
Health and hygiene education is one of the best ways to reduce illness. We conduct workshops that focus on personal hygiene, hand washing with soap, food preparation, household sanitation, and proper waste disposal.
Samaritan’s Purse works with communities to install and rehabilitate hand-dug wells. After a project is completed, we offer maintenance training to community members who will assume responsibility for upkeep.
In emergency settings, unclean water is pumped through this device, which uses several filters and a small amount of chlorine to kill bacteria. One system can purify up to 10,000 gallons per day, enough to provide for the daily needs of 2,500 people.