Experts in water quality analysis for over 25 years

Working alongside the people of Ethiopia, WaterAid is helping bring clean water and safe sanitation to drought-hit areas, as Leonora Oppenheim discovers Kidan Hagos is trying to tell me what she knows about water, but I am distracted from her animated face by the enormous swelling in her neck. Kidan diverts momentarily from her theme to explain that she has been suffering from what we know as a goitre, an enlarged thyroid gland, for 30 of her 50 years, but while the swelling is causing breathing problems and it hurts when she drinks or eats, she is more preoccupied by the need to access clean water. ‘The water sanitation officer has been teaching us our illnesses are because of the dirty water we drink from this river,’ she says. ‘Unfortunately we do not have safe water yet.’

With thanks to L Oppenheim