“Get out of the toilet, unlock the tap to release water, wash your hands, then touch the tap again to stop water flow.”
This is the routine everyone goes through whenever they try to respect the “wash your hands after visiting the latrine” directive.
At the end of it all, you walk away with some or all the germs you had before unlocking the tap and more from the previous users.
Grace Nakibaala, a graduate with a Bachelors in Architecture from Makerere University has been studying to come up with a way of rectifying that mess in our washrooms and on Wednesday 21st March, 2018, she launched the PedalTap which is a retrofittable and affordable, hands free foot operated water dispensing device designed to reduce the spread of infectious diseases and save water.
With the invention above, one shall not have to hold the tap ever again as they’d use their foot to operate the tap and water flows and stops without any hands-on contact with the tap.
Already, the tap is impacting over 30,000 people everyday as it has been installed in among other places, KCCA public toilet, Mulago Hospital, Nakawa Market, and Makerere University.
“I pitched this with a simple prototype that was made of a bottle and a bicycle brake handle and wire. At first everyone believed it was a great idea but not achievable. One of my mentors at WHO (World Health Organisation) said I should focus on architecture and not follow strange dreams that are not achievable”, Nakibaala said in a statement.
However, she maintains that all that negative talk helped her analyse and have the perfect reasons for not following their advice.
“The stereotype here in Uganda is that only people with a lot of academic achievements and age are brilliant.”
With the PedalTap, there is reduced potent and infectious diseases spread at water points in public places like public toilets incase of infection outbreak, reduced nosocomial infections within health facilities from the clinics to the national referral hospital around both rural and urban areas, better hand washing behaviour since people will not have worries of having to touch the dirty tap with their hands, and reduced wastage of water at water points.
Her program is supported by among others the Ministry of Health, USAID, Innovation Consortium, Resilient Africa Network (RAN), Johnson & Johnson, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) and Makerere University.
An idea that started as just concern for her mother during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (since she is an Ophthalmological clinical officer working with Entebbe Hospital – next to the main entry point), Nakibaala’s innovation has already won global awards in innovation challenges that has boosted her income with thousands of dollars.
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