Umthombo 4 - Magazine - Page 5

Flushing
guidelines
during drought

The devastating 2015–2018
drought in Cape Town and its
aftermath saw citizens get behind
city-wide water-saving initiatives
and adopt the catchphrase “If it’s
yellow, let it mellow”, flushing less
and using grey water to do so.
In response, University of Cape
Town (UCT) researchers Waseefa
Ebrahim and Dr Dyllon Randall
published research on different
toilet flushing solutions and their
impacts.
Ebrahim and Randall calculated
that the city’s waste-water
treatment plants could cope
with the additional estimated
893 tonnes of solids added to the
system from grey-water flushing
and allowing urine to stagnate in
toilet bowls. But the immediate
toilet infrastructure could become
clogged by solids.
They go on to offer practical
solutions for water-savers to
avoid damaging their sanitation
infrastructure.
“It [this work] was inspired by
the Cape Town [water] crisis but
ultimately we’re looking towards
what the sanitation of the future
will look like,” Ebrahim said.

Malaria drug less effective
in malnourished children

The most common malaria treatment
worldwide is less effective for those
who are particularly vulnerable to
the disease: severely malnourished
children. This is according to the
first study to address the challenge
of treating malaria in severely
malnourished children, specifically.
“It highlights how important
it is to make sure that optimised
drug doses are developed for
undernourished children and other
vulnerable groups – such as pregnant
women – who are usually excluded
from studies to decide treatment
doses,” says Professor Karen
Barnes from the University of Cape
Town’s (UCT) Division of Clinical
Pharmacology. She, along with UCT
Associate Professor Lubbe Wiesner
and Michiel Smit, previously part of
Wiesner’s lab in the same division,
collaborated with international
partners on the research.
The results showed that not
only were the levels of the most
commonly used antimalarial drug
worldwide lower in children’s blood
compared to adults’, but that among
severely malnourished children there
was about 19% less of the drug than
in other children. This lower exposure
also meant they acquired new
malaria infections sooner.

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