The Commercial Bank of Ceylon donated 5,000-litre water storage tanks to 50 families in Ginnoruwa, Girandurukotte, as part of the Bank’s continuing support to an initiative to help combat the spread of Chronic Kidney Disease of an unknown origin (CKDu).
Designed for the storage of rainwater, the tanks can supply the drinking and cooking water needs of each family for up to six months, protecting them from the harmful impurities in the ground water in the area, the Bank said.
The donation is the latest phase in the ‘Raindrops’ project supported by Commercial Bank since 2016. The project comprised of research into the effectiveness of rainwater as an alternative to ground water in areas where there is a high incidence of kidney disease attributed to poor quality of water.
In the first phase of the project, 25 families that received storage tanks from Commercial Bank consumed harvested rainwater for more than one year, after which they were tested for CKDu and the results compared with those of 25 families that consumed well water during that period. An effort was made to ensure that other variables, such as living conditions, food habits and eating patterns of all 50 families remained the same.
The findings of the study showed that while several persons from the group that consumed well water were diagnosed with Stage 1 CKDu, none of those that consumed rainwater showed signs of the disease, and that the GFR levels of a few kidney patients that used rainwaterhad,in fact, improved.
In the second phase, Commercial Bank commissioned a scientific analysis of the suitability of rainwater for drinking by the Nutrition Department of Wayamba University, which conducted in-depth research into the water quality, pH value, electrical conductivity and other properties of harvested rainwater to determine the viability of promoting this source of water on a mass scale in areas reporting a high incidence of the dreaded disease.
Observing the success of the Raindrops Project, the Centre for Education, Research and Training on Kidney Diseases (CERTKiD) of the University of Peradeniya, noted the importance of providing 5000-litre storage tanks to all families in the Ginnoruwa area, in response to which Commercial Bank donated another 50 5,000-litre tanks.
