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The Clinical and Environmental Infectious Diseases Research Group signs a collaboration for the development of a new biocide for the treatment of drinking water

World Water Day

- Research, Success Stories

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), goal 6 of which being to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all". It is vitally important to provide society with adequate sanitation, hygiene and access to clean water to prevent and contain disease, so water must be of good quality and not be a source of infection. This problem is one of the main lines of research of the members of the Clinical and Environmental Infectious Diseases Research Group (CEID) of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP). The group has discovered a molecule of natural origin with a high bactericidal, amoebicidal and biofilm-reducing capacity. Another advantage of this molecule is its stability at high temperatures, making it an exceptional candidate for the disinfection of hot water circuits: "These circuits are currently the ones with the most problems of bacterial colonisation, since the most commonly used disinfectant, chlorine, evaporates," explains Noemí Párraga, principal investigator of the project.

The collaboration signed by the group's researchers with a private company will finance the improvement of the molecule's characteristics to be applied in large water installations, preventing drinking water from acting as a vehicle for the transmission of bacterial diseases. These diseases are even more important in large socio-sanitary facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, among others.

CEID is also working on the study of the effectiveness of other drinking water treatments as alternatives to chlorine due to its shortcomings such as evaporation in hot water and the production of carcinogenic by-products in contact with organic matter.

World Water Day

World Water Day is an emblematic event celebrated every 22 March, a date proposed by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

The UN 2023 Water Conference marks a critical moment in the context of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs and emphasises the importance of ensuring water and sanitation as cross-cutting elements and to do so by strengthening cooperation and collaboration between all actors involved in the sustainable management of water resources, especially in the face of the impact of climate change.

That is why the theme of World Water Day 2023 is 'Accelerating Change through Partnerships and Cooperation'. The links between the water and climate agenda are clear and encourage us to develop joint policies and actions to address both the challenges of scarcity and the extreme events that cause water-related disasters.