Life-saving engineering

Mention science and saving lives and we often think of scrubs, scalpels and open-heart surgery. Joanne Beale from Engineers Without Borders, in her talk ‘Massive Small Change in Mozambique’ opens our eyes to the fact that doctors are not the only ones saving lives directly – engineers are doing it too.

Joanne spent two and a half years in Mozambique on a project to ameliorate water conditions. In a country where only 25% of the population has access to safe water, 20% of children had consistently been dying of diarrhea before they reached the age of five, a direct result of poor water conditions and lack of sanitation. Joanne set out with a simple mission: to reduce this child mortality rate by spreading information on water sanitation, building water wells and encouraging the construction of latrines in every house.

Joanne took on volunteers from local communities and educated them on water safety, aiming to reach every household to maximize the effect. Most locals had remarkably little knowledge about water sanitation, with commonplace methods of purification, including boiling, UV and chlorine being almost unheard of. Only 30% of the local population had any access to latrines and common practices like hand-washing before meals were scarcely practiced. Joanne’s educational program revolutionized the communities she touched within just two years: 97% of all households targeted received aid, 75% of them having functional latrines at the end of the program and water purification techniques now being widespread among 80% of the population. This has resulted in child mortality being cut by more than half, a figure that is expected to improve as these measures reach more communities.

What is truly remarkable is with how few resources and a virtually inexistent government collaboration, this was achieved. The only paid member of the project was a single field worker who managed to train 15 local volunteers, who themselves trained 20 counsellors each, who succeeded in reaching out to 440,000 people. Joanne also expressed her joy at the willingness of locals to cooperate, with applications for volunteering positions from people with whom she did not even share a common language swarming at her door.

So next time you think about your careers prospects perhaps consider, just for a second, the millions of communities that could use your technological and scientific knowledge to empower them. They might just need it a tiny bit more than the stock exchange market does.