The last few years have seen a spate of devastating natural disasters that have shocked the world with their power and the devastating impact they have had on people's lives. The earthquake in Bam, Iran, in 2003, the South East Asia tsunami exactly a year later, and then more recently, the earthquake and subsequent Tsunami near the Indonesian island of Sumatra, have all resulted in hundreds of thousands of people losing their lives and the almost total destruction of huge areas of land.

Inevitably after events such as these, there is an immediate response by the aid agencies as relief operations get underway to try and restore basic infra-structure and provide the basic fundamental items that are necessary for survival and subsequent recovery. It is fair to say that access to clean drinking water & adequate sanitation is a priority at times like this. The threat of disease increases hugely due to the large numbers of people living close together, often in squalid conditions, and without proper sanitation.

After a natural disaster, as far as water quality testing is concerned there are widespread views on the best course of action to take and a variety of methods can be employed. At Wagetch we realise that one of our more sophisticated kits may not be practical at a time like this. There may not be time to carry out overnight incubations, or the scale of the testing required means procurement of large numbers of expensive kits is not possible.

The key basic water quality parameters that need to be addressed in an emergency are bacteriological indicators of faecal contamination, Free Chlorine Residual, pH, turbidity and possibly Conductivity/TDS. Wagtech is able to offer a range of low-cost instruments that can be purchased separately, or in instances where demand is high, grouped together to make a specifically designed test kit.

These water test kits can be tailored exactly to the end-users specification, with manuals in local languages and purpose built carrying/storage options. Due to a commitment to hold high stock levels of these rapid response components, delivery is guaranteed to be immediate.

After the Tsunami in 2004, Wagtech were approached by both UNICEF and World Health Organization in Sri Lanka looking for low cost testing solutions. Working closely with these organisations, what we came up with was called the Public Health Inspectors Kit.

The basic request was for an extremely portable kit that was able to test the basic parameters of water quality in the remote rural areas that had been badly affected by the Tsunami. The kit comprised pocket pH and TDS meters, a chlorine colour comparator, and a two-part turbidity tube. The operation manuals were translated into three local languages and all the components were supplied in a specially designed backpack. We managed to supply over 1000 of these water test kits in a little under two weeks. In addition Wagtech provided free of charge instruction on the kits through a combination of local and UK based staff.