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Lifesaver – which is also being issued to British troops in Afghanistan – allows personnel to fill up the bottle with dirty water and filter it into a drinkable state in minutes.
The device makes use of cutting edge filter technology to squeeze out viruses and other impurities and has most recently seen action during the Haiti earthquake.
Pritchard, who was a businessman before he turned inventor, told SecurityOracle.com: “There has been some interest in Lifesaver from the emergency services, particularly after flooding events such as those we saw in Gloucestershire.
“In those types of incidents you can have a situation where emergency service personnel can become dehydrated themselves, even though there is water all around. As long as you can filter out impurities, there is plenty to drink.”
Pritchard said he had decided to press ahead with drawing up plans for Lifesaver out of anger that people were dying of preventable diseases in disaster zones.
“I remember getting really frustrated while watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on television,” he said. “It was not that there was a shortage of water – it was the one thing that there was plenty of.
“The project took 18 months from drawing board to having something tangible.”
While disaster relief was the prime motivation behind designing the bottle, however, it is helping reduce the weight soldiers have to carry in Afghanistan.
The product allows them to scavenge for fluid in areas that would otherwise be off limits and keep their personal water reservoirs fully topped up.
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