Saving lives with sunlight

When he finished his PhD he took up a role teaching physics to medical students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), but he had only been there a few short weeks when everything changed.

"One morning the door to my office burst open and a very distinguished looking elderly gentleman walked in, rapped on my desk with his walking stick, and said 'I’d like you to help me save lives with sunlight'. And who can resist an opening line like that?!"

"He was the person who opened my eyes to the problems that nearly 800 million people have around the world every day – getting access to safe drinking water."

The man was Dr Joseph Barnes, formerly a doctor and now a retired tropical medicine lecturer. On his travels he had noticed that many poorer communities were littered with plastic bottles, and he had the idea to use these to put water out in the sun and disinfect it. As an experimentalist with experience in optical measurement, Kevin was asked to help. Nonetheless he soon found himself out of his comfort zone.

"I was setting up lamp arrangements in a dark old lab, and I never expected it to translate so quickly to boots on the ground in Africa, not to mention doing all the non-physics parts of the study, like chemistry and microbiology. I only had the equivalent of O-level biology, so to find me doing biological science would have caused my university friends to laugh themselves silly!"

"You couldn’t have a more stark contrast between where I started and where I finished up", he says. "And everything I saw there was jaw-droppingly new and unbelievable. We were talking about diarrheal disease, and the Maasai that we were working with had a very complex vocabulary for diarrhea – based on colour, smell and taste! It was a very strange place to find myself in."

That was over 20 years ago. He still spends half of his time lecturing in physics at the RCSI, and the rest of the time he’s travelling the globe, convincing people to try the technology. And it’s working. According to a recent estimate approximately 5 million people around the world are now using solar disinfection (known as SODIS) on a daily basis.

One way they are encouraging communities to engage with the technology is by teaching the method to schoolchildren first, who then take the bottles home and show them to their families.

"We’re working with schools in Uganda where the kids now bring their bottles into school and get them disinfected while they’re learning. You see them all walking down the road with their solar disinfection bottles in their hands and you think 'I did that'.

"I’m the luckiest scientist alive", concludes Kevin. "When I was doing my PhD I would have measured success in whether I could get a text message to send 3 milliseconds faster than before. Now I’m leading a project that actually reduces mortality in children. I can’t think of anything better that I could be doing!"

"It’s a very holistic profession and it’s a way of seeing the big picture – how all the different disciplines glue together, and how we can add value."

After an undergraduate degree in Environmental Health at the University of Strathclyde, she spent some years as an environmental health officer in local government, before returning to the University of Strathclyde to do a PhD. With a scholarship from the Carnegie Trust, she carried out her PhD research on diarrheal disease in the field in Southern Malawi, based at the University of Malawi, where she has been ever since.

She has recently been working with Kevin McGuigan, as part of the WATERSPOUTT project, and has been working closely with communities to make the solar disinfection technology as user-friendly as possible. In particular they have been designing ceramic filters, to work alongside SODIS, and she hopes that this project could help improve Malawi’s fragile economy.

"I’d like to see us develop something that can be made locally", she says, "by women’s groups or small, local manufacturers. The filters could be made and fired in a traditional claypot kiln. Locals can make and sell them, and they have minimal environmental impact."

Tracy has a piece of advice for anyone starting a career in environmental health: "Find your area of passion, but don’t lose your holistic perspective. Even when specialising, maintain the connection between different disciplines, as that’s the way to really bring benefit to communities."

In order to get the technology to the people who need it, she has been working closely with the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch University, which gives her access to some very special collaborators. Termed ‘co-researchers’, they are residents of Enkanani, a vast informal settlement just outside of Stellenbosch. Enkanini consists of over 1,000 makeshift dwellings and the residents are dependent on communal facilities.

The co-researchers have agreed to help the institute with their research, and are now helping Wesaal by trialling her technologies. Living their lives in the settlement, they have the best vantage point for determining what they need most, what works for them, and what doesn't.

In Enkanini, explains Wesaal, there are about 8,000 people and only about 32 water standpipes. "If you’re lucky you might have your house near to one of the standpipes, or you might have to walk a long distance to collect water", she says. "The rainwater harvesting and solar pasteurisation system can be set up right next to people’s houses, making life substantially easier."

For Wesaal, one of the best parts of her job is the deep sense of personal satisfaction that she gets from using her knowledge and skills to serve the community.

“For us it’s not about science just to conduct science”, she says. “It’s science that benefits the people around us. It’s really satisfying and rewarding to be involved in.”