When cholera strikes in a low-income country, the rapid construction and successful operation of specialist cholera treatment centres (CTC) by medical NGOs can significantly reduce mortality rates. Such has been the case in Haiti. Since cholera struck the island in October 2010, in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake ten months earlier, Médecins Sans Frontières has operated several CTCs, and treated, as of May 2012, more than 180,000 cholera patients. Although a CTC provides patients with access to specialist medical care, and potentially limits cholera transmission within at-risk communities, it also necessarily results in a large volume of pathogen-laden human faecal waste. This waste has the potential to contaminate water supplies and the environment and to further the transmission of the disease.

To treat and dispose safely of over 320,000 litres of hospital wastewater To establish a new treatment system that is easier to set up than biological treatment and cheaper to operate than full disinfection by chlorine To develop a novel and resilient technology that will help Médecins Sans Frontières to deal with the wastewater from CTCs in future disaster settings in order to reduce the risk of cholera transmission

Clarified effluent with a suspended solids removal greater than 90% Significant reduction in terms of turbidity E. coli removal greater than 99.9% E. coli concentrations in the treated water that consistently meet WHO guideline values for agricultural reuse COD removal greater than 99%