The Failure Of Sanitation Intervention

A problem that affects the daily life of more than a hundred million people is inadequate sanitation and a lack of proper sanitation facilities. For example, only 87% of Indians in urban areas have access to a sanitized latrine, while only 33% of Indians in rural areas have access to a toilet, (The Guardian). This statistic is alarming, as it increases the susceptibility to diseases such as

Alongside the entrepreneur spirit, Innovation is the process of taking new ideas and implementing them into the market. Key word being “new”, an innovation can be sometimes viewed as the application to better solutions that meet new demand-requirements, inarticulated needs or existing market needs. Innovative ideas range from: goods, services, products, processes, services, technologies or ideas that create value for which customers will pay for. For an idea to be an innovation, it must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. This means is that one must be ready and willing put their new idea to the test. On the other hand, there is recognition that “innovation is also critical to cultural, environmental, social, and artistic progress as well” (Bullinger, 2006). With this stated, high-tech innovation is ultimately the reason why we can be thankful for the many new conveniences of the 21st century. Although we might see the forefront of innovation being very prominent in today’s world, innovation is truly nothing new. From the start of modern man times, innovative ideas have paved the way for civilization to advance and develop into what we are today and at the same time, we have barely begin to chip away at the tip of the iceberg of our true human potential. Some scholars believe that innovation is a

“Accepting or Rejecting Innovation” by Jared Diamond, discusses about the factors and processes of adopting new innovations. Diamond explained how innovations, no matter how progressive and efficient it is can be delayed or not used at all. The first factor that decide the new technology can be used is the economic advantage. This is the most obvious, according to the author is if the technology can provide an economic advantage, society would more readily support it. The wheel was used as an example in Native American society, compared to industrial nations, it was not as valued economically due to the lack of domesticated animals. The second factor that the author list was the social and prestigious value of the innovation also plays a crucial

In order to address the issue of clean water availability, the objectives must address multiple levels of the social-ecological model simultaneously. Three overarching objectives will be addressed. 1) The current public water system must increase in capacity. The current public water system is small and up to 40% of households do not have access to the public water system (2). 2) Due to the rural nature of the population, expansion of the current system should begin

(Transition: To better understand the solutions to this issue, let us discuss exactly what drinking unclean water looks like and what it can do.)

Innovation: An initiative, practice, or objective that is modern by individual or other elements of acceptance (Rogers, 2003).

Clean water is essential to our basic needs as human beings and has been acknowledged as a basic human right according to the UN as of July 28, 2010. Still, 1 in 9 (782 million) people don’t have access to clean water, 1 in 3 (2.5 billion) don’t have access to adequate sanitation which results in the spread of often fatal and preventable disease. In a world where 2 in 5 people own a smartphone, it’s easy to forget that for some people even the most basic necessities are hard to come by. Approximately 3.5 million people die every year due to inadequate water supplies. Access to sanitation and safe drinking water could save the lives of 1.5 million children each year.

The topic that I wanted to discuss about is the sanitation problem that New York City has and how can we improve these conditions. First of all, I realized that NYC is dirty and smelly. People are throwing garbage everywhere, resulting in a horrible conditions in NYC. This can affect people’s health and mood, so I want to improve this condition.

Within the unprecedented challenges posed by the explosive growth of urban population, the lack of water supply and sanitation is one of the most urgent and harmful issues. The relationship between water supply and cities’ welfare is very important, as cities require a huge supply of fresh water, and in turn, the way in which the city makes use of water has an impact on the availability of fresh water. It is impossible to consider a city as being ‘sustainable’, if it cannot ensure safe access to drinking water and suitable sanitation to its habitants. (Naciones Unidas, 2010)

This research paper will focus on the social determinant of health involving access to clean water. We have focused our research on the accessibility of safe water intake on First Nations Reserves in Canada, we all know of the issues with limited access to safe water in other countries but we often forget about our own issues at home here. Over a billion people in the world lack safe drinking water, something that many of us in the Canada take for granted on a daily basis. As pointed out by Peter Gleick, “nearly three billion people live without access to adequate sanitation systems necessary for reducing exposure to water-related diseases”5. Throughout this paper we will explore different solution options in order to prevent the spread of dangerous diseases through unsanitary water conditions. Our research is going to express the importance of focusing on the issue we have at hand here in Canada and increasing awareness for the issues here before worrying about other countries over seas. Outbreaks of water-borne infections include but are not limited to; E’coli, Salmonella, Schistosoma, Cholera vibrios and Hepatitis A. Thousands of people die every day worldwide from water-related diseases; these deaths include mostly children and elderly, with some of these incidents taking place in Canada.

Two out of every five people living in Sub-Saharan Africa lack safe water. A baby there is 500 times more likely to die from water-related illness than one from the United States. This is a serious ongoing issue that requires the rest of the world to take action. Water spreads diseases easily if the necessary precautions are not taken. Many developing African countries don’t have sewage treatment, or the people don’t have methods to filter and disinfect. Once a person is sick either there is no way to cure them, or medical care is too expensive, so they are left untreated with a high risk of death. Although many believe that the fight for sanitary water in Africa is insurmountable, people in these developing countries can overcome their challenge to access clean water and avoid water-borne diseases through proper sewage treatment facilities, universal water filtration and medical care.

Innovation is the actual use of nontrivial change and improvement in a process, product or system that is novel to the institution developing the change.

The word ‘innovation’ is derived from Latin word ‘innovare’, which means “to change something to new”. In other words, we may say that ‘innovation’ means changing the regular way of doing things and involves doing the regular things in a novel way.

The issues in this case revolve around the launch of a mini-oxidation product which will solve global clean water issues. Their filtration unit has already experienced two failures in the launch of this product. Vyas, the business manager of this unit, is convinced that the unit can be turned around by innovativeness. He revives an abandoned oxidation technology and recommends his team to develop a small-scale oxidation system with the capacity of disinfecting waste-water in small batches. While the market analysis of the product proved promising, marketing the product was a tussle and it failed due to defects in the design and lack of interest in the market. Through a three-phased process recommended by Cynthia Jackson, Vyas team was

Innovation is normally used to denote the process that takes place when a product or a process is developed, from idea to market; the concept of invention only denotes the process that takes place when new ideas or solutions are generated. Baumol (2002) argues “is it possible to have lots of inventions and still lack innovations. Nevertheless, inventions are a necessary precondition for innovation”.