The WADHE Project is enormously grateful to have received the Large Grant HIF Award!

From Barcelona, the WADHE team would like to send a big thank you to the members of the HIF committee for giving our team the opportunity to fill gaps in innovation within the WASH sector.

There has become a major need to develop standard protocols for Water Disinfection of Hepatitis E Virus (WADHE) humanitarian interventions. In the last decade, several outbreaks of this emergent virus have been affecting populations mainly in Africa and Asia. WHO estimates that every year there are 20 million Hepatitis E infections, over three million acute cases of hepatitis E, and 70 000 hepatitis E-related deaths.

As there are currently no curative therapies for Hepatitis E infection, prevention is the key intervention to limit the impact of this deadly disease. Fecal-oral route is the predominant mode of transmission of HEV; so, clearly, measures aimed at proper treatment of drinking water, safe disposal of human excreta, and improvement in personal hygiene are the keystones for its control.

The project’s approach is to first develop a baseline of experimental data with different water treatments and the HEV removal and inactivation. The coded reports will then be used to develop a Standard Operational Protocol to disinfect water in emergency settings, considering the conditions of specific scenarios.

The project’s methodology will consist of the following elements:

Create an experimental system to analyse HEV removal/inactivation:

The experimental system will be adapted in order to test three major water disinfection treatments: Chlorine disinfection, UV treatment and Rapid Flocculation + Chlorination sachets (Household Water Treatment and Storage).

Characterise inactivation profiles for each treatment:

The experimental system of the above process will be used by the three different water treatments in two main water matrices - surface water and ground water - by two different technics - molecular assays and cell culture assays, evaluating potential models for future analysis of infectious HEV by applying only quick molecular assays.

Developing SOPs for emergency scenarios:

With HEV removal/inactivation profiles and the discussion with WASH practitioners, an appropriate SOP will be designed considering emergency scenarios of HEV outbreaks.

Identification of sources of contamination in a HEV outbreak

Current outbreak scenarios will be visited, to study HEV transmission risks, in order to use the filed data to better adapt the SOPs considering levels of HEV circulating in an outbreak scenario. Specific human viruses used as indicators of human fecal contamination, Human adenoviruses (HAdV), will also be quantified by qPCR for tracing potential sources of fecal contamination in water.

The project outputs, in 18 months from now, will involve: producing for the first time, consistent experimental assays on HEV stability against main disinfection water treatments and answering an operational need on water services in vulnerable settings with the end objective of developing Standard Operational Protocols on Water Treatment in Hepatitis E outbreak scenario.

This great project will be accomplished through the work of the great parties involved:

Intermon Oxfam

University of Barcelona, Laboratory of Virus Contaminants of Water and Food

Médecins Sans Frontières

Joe Brown, Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

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We will keep you updated, so keep an eye in our blog!