In the aftermath of a disaster, the spread of disease due to improper sanitation is a concern that is easily overlooked, yet one only needs to recall the cholera outbreak after the 2010 Haiti earthquake to realise just how big a risk the spread of pathogens can be. Current UNICEF guidelines indicate that Latrines should be constructed after a disaster in order to manage sanitation, but these can be impractical to quickly build, and difficult to use for the elderly or injured.
The QuickRelief Emergency Toilet tackles sanitation control in a completely different way to existing disaster toilets. Rather than waste being collected in large open pits, the QuickRelief uses individual bags with attach conveniently to the body of the toilet. After these biodegradable bags have been used once, they can be sealed shut, and safely buried or thrown away, keeping the waste completely contained away from people and water until it is no longer dangerous.
Because of the design of the QuickRelief’s body, it can be easily used by anyone; you don’t require strength in your legs or ankles, so the elderly or those injured in disaster don’t face the same challenges that they do when using a squat toilet. The QuickRelief is also designed to be flat-packable and lightweight, meaning that it’s easy to transport large numbers of the toilets into areas that need them most, where they can be quickly assembled. This has the added advantage of making the design cheap to produce; the body is made from only 3 injection-moulded parts, meaning that once initial tooling has been set up, very large quantities of the toilet could be produced at minimal cost.
The QuickRelief Emergency Toilet really does have the potential to revolutionise disaster sanitation control. It eliminates concerns about finding safe places to dig pit-latrines, as well as how to sensitively serve the needs of women, children and the frail. It provides victims of a disaster with a greater sense of dignity and safety, in a time when they need it most.