Procter and Gamble (P&G) has reiterated its commitment to save 10,000 lives each year by delivering more than 2billion litres of clean drinking water in the developing world by 2020.
Statistics from World Health organisation (WHO) indicates that over 1billion people lack access to clean drinking water and approximately 1,600 children die daily from complications resulting from water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and fever. This staggering figure is more than that from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.
The company initiated a programme dubbed Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) in 2004 through its water purifying technology that cleans and purifies water as well as stops re-contamination. This is done using a simple sachet known as P&G Purifier of Water (previously Pur) which uses the technology that is in municipal water treatments. In Kenya, P&G runs the programme mostly in Nyanza , Western and Coast provinces where there is adequate water which is however not clean.
So far, the company, said it has distributed approximately 70 million sachets which in turn has helped provide 700 million liters of clean drinking water in Kenya since the programme begun. The programme which works with over 140 partners across the globe in over 75 countries provides clean water to people in need through outreach programmes for mothers in health clinics as well as students in school.
It also responds to emergencies including cholera outbreaks, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. The water cleaning process involves adding the four grams of powder found in P&G purifier of water sachet to ten litres of turbid water. The product visually cleans the water removing pathogenic microorganisms, viruses, parasites and suspended matter from the contaminated water, leaving it safe for families to drink. It removes more than 99.9% of common waterborne bacteria helping to reduce diarrheal disease incidence in the developing world.
P&G Communications Manager Irene Mwathi, said safe drinking water and sanitation was a huge challenge to humanity due to high levels of poverty in the developing world.
“Clean water is a basic need for human life and one of the millennium development goals that Kenya is striving to achieve, we are therefore glad to share a solution towards mitigating this problem,” she added
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