WINTER 2014
see the world through the framework of the
solutions we have to offer; and two, it gives us
something to do.” Ali adds to this list a third
reason: human fallibility, especially in crisis
situations.
A child collects water at a tapstand in the Gendrassa refugee
camp, South Sudan. (Photo courtesy of Syed Imran Ali)
In September 2012, Ali enlisted for a second
humanitarian crisis. He joined an eightmonth mission with Doctors Without Borders
in South Sudan, where the newly independent
country was being overwhelmed with
refugees escaping years of violent clashes.
Ali’s job was to implement emergency
water treatment systems in refugee and
transit camps, manage water and sanitation
infrastructure and staff in MSF healthcare
facilities, and lead camp sanitation building
projects. He was witness to a severe health
crisis at a camp called Jamam on the Upper
Nile state of South Sudan, to which 30,000
people had fled. Jamam, which means
“swamp” in Maban, was picked in haste
by authorities of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and in
part because it was 50 km from the Sudanese
border, a UNHCR requirement. The place
lived up to its name. When the rainy season
hit in May, the camp flooded and diarrheal
illnesses and hepatitis E overwhelmed the
refugee population.
Ali and his colleagues worked tirelessly.
In a Jan. 29, 2013 MSF blog, he wrote: “I’ve
stopped thinking. The last time I stopped
to think something out, to parse it, to give
it a name, was months ago …. [Yet] I had a
home that was not this place, this strange,
inhospitable, impossible place that is now
home for 15,000, 65,000, 115,000 people, who
had to run here, and from where it seems like
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they won’t leave for a long time still, for the
abode of war still reigns in their hills.”
Among the reasons that Ali’s brain was
functioning only for emergency purposes was
because by January he was also working in a
nearby refugee camp called Batil, which had
become home to 35,000 people and where a
third of the camp had no sanitation services.
The result was another large hepatitis E
outbreak from so many people defecating
outside. “There’s a structural problem in the
humanitarian system,” said Ali in response
to why the story of aid seems often to be one
of failure. “There’s no feedback mechanism.
No one in the field has the capacity, because
they’re always reacting.”
But Ali has found a way to provide feedback.
During his time at the Jamam refugee camp,
he realized that chlorination levels for camp
water systems were based on standards for
municipal water systems with sophisticated
infrastructure—even though a refugee camp
is radically different from a city. To deal with
the daily reality of sick and dying people, Ali
began to study how free residual chlorine in
water behaved in the refugee camp setting.
He soon discovered that it was inadequate—
that within four to six hours of collection,
the chlorine was mostly gone. He set out to
correct this oversight.
Ali’s current work at the Blum Center may
very well rewrite the UN guidelines for
refugee camp water systems, protecting
upwards of 50 million people. “This project
will help to build the evidential base for safe
water practices in humanitarian settings,
something which is almost totally lacking
at present,” said one of Ali’s mentors, Ed
McBean, a professor of engineering at
University of Guelph, who holds the Canada
Research Chair in Water Supply Security.
“The work will improve best practices for safe
water supply in emergencies the world over.”
Last summer, in collaboration with UNHCR,
Ali collected chlorination level data at the
Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, and in 2015
he will do the same at two more sites, in
Rwanda and Jordan, and take data during the
winter to observe any s X\