Rural communities in the developing world rely on unsafe surface water which
have significant contamination from runoff. This project involved a
multidisciplinary international team approach to create a sustainable water
supply to an isolated health clinic in a rural village in Ghana. Water testing was
conducted over a one year period from the community’s major water sources and
compared to World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commission
guidelines. The engineering team completed a sanitary survey and designed a
sustainable rainwater collection system that incorporates filtration and ozone
treatment. The project also reviewed medical records of diarrheal disease and
malaria cases in the community between wet and dry seasons. The results of
statistical analysis showed a trend, though not significant, among the younger
patients (ages 0–19) for increased prevalence of waterborne disease during the
wet season (19.7%) compared to the dry season (16.0%) (p-value <0.09). There
was a significant difference in the prevalence of malaria depending on seasons
when stratified by gender and age: an increased prevalence of malaria for older
women in the dry season (33.7%) compared to the wet season (24.8%), (p-value
<0.01). This paper describes the project and interdisciplinary design.