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“A balm for the soul”
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For many of us here in the U.S., cholera is something we only know about from a book that we read in high school.

But for millions of people around the world, this disease is a very real threat to their health simply because they don't have access to clean drinking water.

So, what if there were an easy way to filter out cholera-causing bacteria from water?


Image via iStock.

That is exactly the question that marine microbiologist Rita Colwell pondered while she was on a research trip in Bangladesh.

She had been studying the bacterium that causes cholera, called Vibrio cholerae, for decades and had made a series of important discoveries about it with her colleagues. For example, they had learned the bacteria could survive in both fresh- and seawater and that it was the primary bacteria attached to copepods, microscopic crustaceans and plankton that live in water all over the world.

But up until then, their research had focused mostly on the bacteria and the environment where it was found — not on any practical solutions that might help people not get sick.

"It occurred to us, well, my goodness, in all the work we are doing, clearly we could do something for the village families who get cholera," Colwell says.

An electron microscope image of V. cholerae bacteria, which causes cholera. Image via Dartmouth University/Wikimedia Commons.

Cholera is a deadly diarrheal disease caused by the ingestion of contaminated food or water.

While this disease has been rare in the United States for over a century, it is still a serious problem throughout the developing world, including in Bangladesh, where access to clean drinking water can be difficult. In fact, according to the World Health Organization,between 1.3 to 4 million people get sick with cholera every year, and as many as 143,000 people die from it.  

In rural Bangladesh, where Colwell was working, cholera was a serious problem because women would scoop drinking surface water directly from canals, rivers, and lakes. There was no filtration, and there wasn’t enough fuel, like firewood, available for families to boil water every day.

Colwell and her colleagues realized that if they could devise a crude, inexpensive filter to strain the copepods (which the V. cholerae bacteria are attached to) from the water, maybe they could help people protect themselves from the disease.

They started by testing out T-shirt material, but that didn’t work. It was difficult to rinse, it didn’t dry, and a lot of debris in the water got through the weave in the fabric.

Then they tried sari cloth the same cloth that women in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal have worn for thousands of years. It's also a cloth that women in rural Bangladesh already were using to prepare home-brewed drinks.

Sari cloth has been used as traditional clothing for centuries in the region. Image via iStock.

It worked.

The sari fabric, when it was folded four times over the urns used to gather water, created a mesh filter that was effective enough to remove 99% of the bacteria attached to the plankton copepods that cause the cholera.

Not only that, but the cloth could be reused over and over again, making it a very practical and inexpensive solution. That’s because the cloth is light and porous, Colwell explains. "Because it rains — with monsoons — every day [there], the sari cloth is designed to dry quickly. So, what is nice about it is that you can unfold it, rinse it off, and then hang it up. It dries and then you can re-use it."

Colwell and her colleagues taught villagers how to make their own sari filters in 65 rural Bangladeshi villages, and over three years, she says, "we were able to show a 50% reduction in cholera."

Folded four times over a water collection urn, sari cloth can reduce the amount of cholera in drinking water. Image via iStock.

The team returned to the villages five years later and found that news of the filters had spread to other villages. As many as 75% of the population in these villages were using these filters.

And, Colwell says, they discovered something called the "herd effect" taking place — even if villagers weren’t filtering water themselves, fewer people were getting sick because fewer people were shedding the bacteria back into the water. "By virtue of all their neighbors staying healthy because they filtered," she explains, "they were not exposed to the larger numbers of bacteria themselves."

Of course, the filter isn't 100% effective at catching cholera-causing bacteria. Still, Colwell says there is power in this simple solution.

According to UNICEF, 663 million people do not have access to clean water around the world. Not only that, almost 2.4 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation.  

There are a lot of high-tech solutions out there that try to address the problem of access to clean water, she says, and there are a lot of ways to work to combat the spread of cholera. But sometimes, it is the simple, inexpensive solutions — such as the sari filter — that can do a lot of good.

A view of rural Bangladesh. Image via Balaram Mahalder/Wikimedia Commons.

With more education about how the sari can be used, she says, it can make a difference for public health in regions where there isn’t access to clean water. Sari filters could even be useful in the aftermaths of large hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters all over the world, she adds.

Colwell and her colleagues hope to spread the word about sari filters to other places, such as Africa and other regions in Asia, where inexpensive solutions have the potential to make a big impact.

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Gates Foundation

In the United States, more than 300 kids end up in the hospital for burn injuries every day.

Antibiotics are often part of routine burn treatment — even if the kids don't need them. We've all had experiences like this. It can take up to two days for a doctor to diagnose an infection, so we're given antibiotics as a "just to be safe" measure ... even if our injury isn't infected.

As a result, antibiotic resistance is now considered one of the biggest health threats we face today. Our overuse of antibiotics is leading to record high levels of antibiotic resistance, and infections and injuries that have been treatable for a long time may once again become difficult to get rid of.


But! Fear not! There's a brilliant new bandage out there that promises to help doctors cut down on doling out unnecessary antibiotics.

It's all about what turns neon green.

Developed by scientists at the University of Bath, this bandage-of-the-future is a special medical dressing that can determine if a wound becomes infected and get results faster than anything else out there today.

The so-called "best bandage ever" uses UV light to provide the answers people need ... fast.

These bandages contain nanocapsules that contain a dye that bursts open in the presence of disease-causing bacteria. Bright green = infection.


The test on the right is screaming, "Infection!"

As I mentioned before, it can take doctors up to two days to determine if a burn wound is infected. For young kids and their weak immune systems, two days untreated can become a dangerous situation when dealing with infection — or not.

"Children are at particular risk of serious infection from even a small burn," explained Dr. Amber Young. "However, with current methods clinicians can't tell whether a sick child might have a raised temperature due to a serious bacterial burn wound infection, or just from a simple cough or cold.

So it's understandable why antibiotics have been prescribed as precautionary measures for so long.

But with the arrival of these nanocapsule bandages, the future is now; an infection diagnosis is possible within just a few hours, giving doctors the green light to act fast and know exactly what steps are necessary.

This breakthrough can help put families at ease, cut down on hospital costs, and limit the use of unnecessary antibiotics – which has turned into a serious problem.

There's a reason the World Health Organization has launched its first-ever World Antibiotic Resistance Week. If we're not careful, common infections that have been easily treatable in the past will come back to cause some major problems.

This bandage saves the day in two amazing ways: speedy and more accurate diagnoses for infections and fewer unnecessary antibiotics.

For anyone who's been severely burned or injured, you know there's nothing you want more than fast solutions and less hospital time. A diagnosis in two days versus a diagnosis in a few hours is huge!

Nanocapsules to the rescue! Glow on (but preferably don't!), my tiny friends.

See them in action here: