Inspired by watching his son playing in the bath, engineer Daigo Ishiyama created a tap that works without the need of running water. When Daigo Ishiyama contracted Covid in the spring of 2020, he felt grateful knowing he had the basics in place to keep his family safe. “In the developed world, we tend to take access to water, sanitation, and hygiene for granted,” he says. “But a steep inequity in access means many go without these basic human necessities – I knew I was among the lucky ones.”.
![[The Sato Tap works with bottles of water and includes a soap holder]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ddab81b450340e49f58e0058686d59831ce8aa88/0_416_6240_3744/master/6240.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Handwashing with soap and clean water helps to reduce the transmission of a range of diseases, it lowers risks of respiratory infections and diarrhoea, and is the most effective and economical remedy against antimicrobial resistance. This was the conundrum facing Ishiyama while he isolated in his New Jersey home in 2020 as news of the virus wreaking havoc around the world blared from his TV screen. As the global death toll quickly began to rise, he felt a desperate need to do something about it.
![[Woman using Sato tap Kenya. Permissions tbc]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/91a877359c9f5086d1d2d14b817b052ab67df226/0_400_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“We needed to approach the problem from the end user’s perspective and work backwards in order to create an appropriate and effective solution,” he says. “From experience, I knew we needed something that would be straightforward to use and did not rely on plumbing or access to running water.”.
