A natural approach to circumvent shortages of distilled water in LMICS: a low-cost water purification unit

Abstract

In this document, some sections exhibit all the art, craft and techniques in the design activities for the Pharie team. These consist of the practical part of needs finding, needs screening and conceptualization of viable ideas for the possible solutions through different types of prototypes that is; paper, virtual and functional that were all achieved. On Sunday 28th, March 2021, we released a needs finding Google form to health workers in our contact lists and we obtained responses from the following; Dr Ayebare Judith (Lubaga Hospital), Ms Catherine Nassozi (St. Catherine hospital), Dr Oyik Brian (Buhweju Health Centre IV), Dr Owori Rodgers (Gwattiro Hospital), Rukundo Lydia (Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital), Suzan Sagala (Buwambo Health Centre IV), Proscovia Ruth (Jinja Regional Referral Hospital) and Dr Bugembe Ivan (Buwambo Health Centre IV). From their responses, we chose four challenges that we would assess to understand the needs attached, that is lack of infant BP cuffs, nosocomial infections from congested wards, equipment breakdown due to lack or limited use of distilled water and patient-to-medical worker ratio problem. Amongst the four challenges, there was an increased rate of equipment breakdown due to poor maintenance and care which we studied further to find solutions. After use of secondary data collection tool and a number of discussions with different professionals around healthcare centres, we asserted that this problem was attached to the insufficient supply of distilled water for the healthcare processes. We therefore summarise the technical procedures undertaken by team Pharie to solve the challenge of insufficient supply of distilled water by making a Gravitational Based Water Purification System as substitute for traditional water distillers