 |
|||||||||
|
According to the International Red Cross, the lack of major outbreaks of disease in areas hit by the tsunami is largely due to the rapid deployment of clean water and sanitation teams. The water treatment, Pur Purifier of Water, reduces incidence of water borne illnesses such as cholera and diarrhea which threaten to compound the devastation of December's tsunami. Shipments of PuR sachets have been sent from PSI warehouses in Pakistan by AmeriCares and are being distributed in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and to the International Federation of the Red Cross for Sri Lanka. The shipments of PuR have been distributed by many aid organizations, including World Vision and UNICEF. PuR is being given to survivors for free. PuR packets contain powder that remove pathogens and cause particles to settle to the bottom of the mixing container when mixed with water. Point-of-use water treatment approaches like PuR have shown reductions of 30-50% in diarrhea disease, with even higher reductions during water-borne epidemics. PSI/India has also dispatched 7,500 Safewat safe water treatment kits and 10,800 sachets of Neotral oral rehydration salts to the hardest hit areas in the state of Tamil Nadu. PSI/India also increased SafeWat production to produce 10,000 bottles per week, which is enough to disinfect more than 13 million liters of water. The PSI team cited unprecedented scenes of destruction with entire villages washed away and a death toll speculated to be far in excess of government. PSI volunteers are training survivors in four state-run relief camps on large and small scale product usage. Municipal workers trained by PSI to disinfect large water tanks have treated UNICEF's 100-liter Sintex water tanks with Safewat. PSI/Myanmar has been collaborating with World Vision to distribute its WaterGuard water purification solution to hundreds of affected households in the south and Delta areas of Myanmar. To date, approximately 2,000 bottles of WaterGuard have been distributed for free. In addition, PSI staff met with local Burmese impacted by the tsunami to discuss water sanitation and other health risks related to the tsunami. UNICEF is distributing 'family kits', which include a bottle of WaterGuard, to families in affected areas. PSI's water purification solution and PuR were both developed in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While PSI is not primarily a disaster emergency or relief organization,
it has had experience with rapidly ramping up operations in disaster
affected areas in Haiti, Zambia and Madagascar. Days after the massive
flooding and earthquakes in 2004 that destroyed the northern city of
Gonaives, PSI/Haiti sent staff with plastic wader boots to distribute
PuR free in order to prevent diarrhea diseases in children under five.
|
 |
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||||
