Fighting Invisible Enemies: How New Tech is Helping Us Detect Waterborne Pathogens Faster

Waterborne diseases continue to pose a major global health threat, with unsafe drinking water responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually—most notably among children under five. Traditional methods for detecting pathogens in water, such as culture-based or lab-intensive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques, are slow, expensive, and require centralized laboratory infrastructure. These limitations hinder timely responses to contamination and public health risks.