New paper: Drinking water quality from rural handpump-boreholes in Africa

Open Access here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab8031 Groundwater provides a vital source of drinking water for rural communities in many parts of Africa, particularly in the dry season when there are few safe alternative sources. This paper summarises results from a study (n…

UPGro T-Group research finds cancer-causing viruses in Kampala and Arusha slum groundwater

by Isaiah Esipisu and Dr Jan Willem Foppen (T-GroUP) In Summary The study found that most groundwater in the two slums contains traces of herpes virus, poxvirus and papilloma virus.Cancer is one of the top killer diseases in East Africa,…

Cutting-edge discovery on viruses in groundwater: T-GrouP at EGU press conference

Associate Professor Jan Willem Foppen, leader of the T-GroUP project will be presenting his team's work on mapping DNA viruses in groundwater under African cities at a press conference on Monday 8th April at 14:00 CEST. This is part of…

:: New UPGro Paper :: Tryptophan-like fluorescence as a measure of microbial contamination

A new paper has been published from the UPGro Gro for GooD project, working in Kenya, which develops the work done under the UPGro Catalyst Project on mapping groundwater quality, which developed an exciting new low-cost, real-time method of measuring…

Safe water in towns and peri-urban areas: challenges of self-supply and water quality monitoring

Millions of people in towns and cities across Sub-Saharan Africa depend on groundwater day-to-day - but is it safe to drink? How can we measure the safety quickly, cheaply and accurately?  In this RWSN-UPGro webinar, Dr Jenny Grönwall (SIWI/T-GroUP) and…

Promising new groundwater pollution sensor – New UPGro paper published

Shallow groundwater wells, are the main source of drinking water in many rural and peri-urban communities. The quantity and variety of shallow wells located in such communities make them more readily accessible than private or government operated deep boreholes, but…

New Arsenic & Fluoride mapping tool

The Eawag “Groundwater Assessment Platform”, funded by SDC, is now live: http://www.gapmaps.org/ “Over 300 million people worldwide use groundwater contaminated with arsenic or fluoride as a source of drinking water. The Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)…

Fancy a swig? Water quality in shallow wells in Kisumu, western Kenya

by Heather Price, reposted from: http://sti-cs.org/2015/07/16/fancy-a-swig-water-quality-in-shallow-wells-in-kisumu-western-kenya/ We all know that access to sufficient clean water is vital for sustaining life. For us humans, the ideal scenario is that everyone can go to a tap in their house, turn it on,…

Hidden Crisis: Borehole failure highlighted in Uganda Sector Performance Report

The UPGro Hidden Crisis project, led by Prof. Alan MacDonald at BGS, has already made an impact in its first study country - Uganda. Each year, the Ministry of Water and Environment coordinates a Joint Sector Review (JSR) and produces…