By: GlobalMedic
GlobalMedic | Rainfresh Household Water Purification Units
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
Aug 15, 2016
Media
Rainfresh Household Water Purification Units are point-of-use water filtration systems, designed to provide safe drinking water from virtually any water source. In the aftermath of an emergency, diseases caused by contaminated drinking water pose the greatest threat to affected families. GlobalMedic has partnered with Canadian ceramic filter producer Envirogard to distribute Rainfresh units around the world and provide an innovative, inexpensive, low-tech and environmentally friendly drinking water solution. Rainfresh’s unique ceramic filtration technology traps harmful bacteria and cysts inside the cartridges and safe, clean drinking water passes through, ready to drink. By installing the filters inside food-grade plastic buckets, an easy to use clean water source can be used in a family’s home for up to one year.
GlobalMedic has distributed over 34,000 Rainfresh units worldwide. They have been utilized in responses to typhoons in the Philippines; tsunamis in Japan; cyclones in Vanuatu, flooding in Myanmar and Pakistan; earthquakes in Haiti, Nepal, and Ecuador; droughts in Kenya; and conflicts in the DR Congo, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
GlobalMedic’s Rapid Response Team demonstrates the Rainfresh unit in Myanmar.
Beneficiary enjoys clean drinking water from a Rainfresh system.
GlobalMedic
GlobalMedic was founded in 1998 by Rahul Singh with the unique operational mandate of providing efficient, cost-effective and innovative disaster relief in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe. Singh has combined a passion for humanitarian assistance with a frontline emergency perspective and has continuously focused on finding innovative Canadian solutions for challenges that arise in disaster contexts.
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