A BUSINESSMAN is sending his lifesaving invention to disaster struck Haiti in a bid to help the hundreds of thousands of people desperately in need of aid.

IPSWICH: A businessman is sending his lifesaving invention to disaster struck Haiti in a bid to help the hundreds of thousands of people desperately in need of aid.

Michael Pritchard hit the headlines in 2007 after creating a unique filter system that enables safe drinking water to come from a contaminated source.

His Ipswich-based business is now sending 1,000 Lifesaver Jerrycans and bottles to Haiti to help with the aid effort.

The bottle can revolutionise the way vital fresh water is brought to disaster hit areas because it turns polluted water into filtered sterile drinking water without the need of boiling, tablets or chemicals.

Mr Pritchard, whose business is in Tuddenham Avenue, said: “It is not the shortage of water that is the issue; it is the shortage of clean, safe drinking water. There are riots on the streets already with people fighting over bottles of water.

“The solution is not trying to ship in millions of bottles of water; the solution is being able to use the water that's already there but turn it into water people can drink.

“As little as �4 could provide one child with clean water for a year. Children need at least two litres of water a day to survive. One Lifesaver Jerrycan can produce the equivalent of 20,000 litres of clean, sterile drinking water.”

Mr Pritchard, who appeared on the BBC's Dragons' Den TV programme, spent nearly three years developing his invention after being inspired when watching coverage of the tsunami in south east Asia, on Boxing Day 2004, and of Hurricane Katrina, in Louisiana, the following year.

He was amazed to see refugees waiting for days to get any fresh water.

His invention is described as the world's first ultra filtration water bottle and can remove bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi and all other microbiological waterborne pathogens.

The bottles have been sent to Haiti as part of Operation Blessing, a non-profit organisation whose goal is to alleviate poverty and human suffering through various relief programs throughout the world.

Are you staging an event or raising money to help those in Haiti? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich IP4 1AN or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk.