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AROUND THE WORLD 1: Filtering Water With Old Clothes in Bangladesh

Using traditional clothing to filter water may save many lives in India and Bangladesh by reducing cholera, a deadly disease that kills at least 2,000 people a year and sickens many more.

Scientists taught women in villages in Bangladesh to use a Sari, a traditional Hindu garment, to filter the water they gathered from ponds and rivers. Cholera bacteria attach to tiny organisms in the water, and when those organisms are filtered out, the cholera is removed too. After a year and a half, the villages that used filtering had half as much cholera as the villages that didn't. Even the people who did have cholera in the communities that used filtering probably got it when they traveled to other villages.

After doing this study to find out that the technique works, researchers plan to teach people all over India and Bangladesh to filter their water.

Cholera is found all over the world but is especially a problem in India and Bangladesh. It is easy to treat in hospitals, but for many people in the developing world who live far away from a hospital or who cannot afford treatment, it is deadly. If it is not treated, it kills at least 50 percent of people who get it, especially children and the elderly.

Saris are made of lightweight cotton fabric, and almost every woman in Bangladesh has one. Women were taught to fold the garment so they would filter water through eight layers of cloth, in order to remove as much bacteria as possible.

Scientists tried several filtering techniques, including nylon mesh, new sari cloth, and old saris, but the used saris worked the best. In the laboratory, they found that filtering with an old sari removed 99 percent of the cholera bacteria. The solution is a very cheap and effective way to save lives in poor communities where medical help is hard to find.

--Written by Andrew Barker

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