H2O

 Two things that interest me, is one the National Geographic Magazine and water. and guess what they had an entire issue published on water,  wow so how cool!  So anyways I thought I would share a few neat articles from the April 2010 issue. Water our thirsty world.

Health in Your Hands

The children are excited and giggling. It seems like a game—stand by a sink and scrub your hands. But in the poorest parts of Karachi, Pakistan, the lesson is vital for disease prevention, and the teachers get great results. After a few sessions, says public health expert Dr. Mubina Agboatwalla, "the mothers tell us children are constantly washing hands at home, many times a day.” And not just their own: "They’re making their brothers and sisters wash their hands too."

That ripple effect helps save lives. Washing hands with soap for at least 20 seconds costs pennies—and when done properly, slashes the rates of infections, such as pneumonia and diarrheal diseases, that kill more than 3.5 million kids under age five worldwide every year. Recent studies of hand-washing habits in the United States and United Kingdom point up another problem. Adults—especially men—tend not to scrub when they should or as often as they claim. They’d do well to learn a thing or two about hand hygiene from Karachi’s kids. —Hannah Bloch

High marks for clean water
Retrieve a discarded water bottle. Tear off the label and fill with any water that is not too murky from a creek, standpipe, or puddle. Place the bottle on a piece of metal  in full sun. in six hours the UVA radiation will kill viruses, bacteria and parasites in water, making it safe to drink. 

SODIS, the acronym for the swiss-pioneered water-disinfection program, is now being used all over the world to provided drinking water for some four million people. "it's simple it's free and it's effective." says Ibelatha Mhelala, principal of the Ndolela Primary school in Tanzania. in 2006 her school started using SODIS to to disinfect its contaminated tap water, placing bottles on the buildings's corrugated metal roof. The result? Absenteeism due to diarrhea dropped considerably and examination scores soared. "Before we started SODIS, only 10-15 % of the children passed the national sixth grade exams." says Mhelela "Now 90-95 % of the students pass" _Mark Jenkins
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN


Jesus used water as an illustration to salvation. If the swiss have found the simplest way of sharing clean water so that even children understand. How simple should it be to share the living water of salvation with the world? Just a thought...