Lifestraw is a water purifier.

It’s a plastic tube filled with magic. You suck on one end, and out comes clean drinking water from the other.

Just one problem: kids younger the five, the elderly, some kinds of disabled people, people who are really sick cannot use one. And, hello, that’s actually your most vulnerable population.

This is a major, major issue: the lifestraw cannot protect the people you who are most likely to die.

It’s not a hard fix.

It’s a plastic tube, about three feet long. You stick one end over the lifestraw. You suck on the other end. The tube fills up with liquid.

If you want more protection, use a shaped piece of plastic, like a bottle. Have the mouth of the person sucking on the tube a fair distance from the water accumulating in the reservoir, perhaps incorporating a goose neck or even a valve so that you don’t get contamination from the person sucking in the water supply.

When the reservoir is filled enough, pour the water out, probably by disconnecting the bottle from the lifestraw, but possibly by unscrewing a cap on the side and pouring the water out there (or a spigot would do.)

Simple, elegant, cheap – distribute 10% as many of these as lifestraws and you should be fine.

An even better approach is to disconnect the reservoir from the lifestraw and hand it to the person who will use it, so that the clean water is not poured into a dirty container. How to prevent bacterial recontamination of the water in the container is a hard problem, but Microban might be the answer. This might also have applications for the Potters for Peace Filtron.