World Water Day: DFID Supports Haiti Clean Water

WEYBRIDGE, UK, March 22, 2005 — The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) has awarded a grant of £225,000 to Procter & Gamble (P&G) Health Science Institute (NYSE:PG) and its partner PSI, through the Business Linkages Challenge Fund, that will provide safe drinking water and save lives in Haiti through P&G's product PuR Purifier of Water.

Today marks World Water Day, as well as the launch of the UN International Decade for Action "Water for Life", designed to highlight the World Health Organisation's concern that more than one billion people lack safe water and an estimated two million children die each year because of diarrhoeal diseases, which could be prevented by safe drinking water.

PuR is a simple, low-cost water purifier which has already saved countless lives by supplying more than 200 million litres of drinking water in emergency situations throughout the world — particularly in Tsunami hit regions, as well as other countries such as Botswana, Chad, Malawi, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

So far, PuR sachets have provided almost 3 million litres of drinking water to Haiti, which has long suffered from access to clean water, with the problem exacerbated throughout the last year due to civil unrest, severe flooding and heavy damage from hurricanes. This timely grant should not only reduce the number of Haitians suffering from illnesses such as diarrhoea and cholera induced by drinking contaminated water by up to 50 per cent, but with diarrhoeal diseases being the primary case of death in infants, the mortality rate should significantly fall. In this project PuR will be distributed by PSI Haiti through their network of women's groups.

According to P&G's Associate Director for Corporate Sustainable Development in Europe, Dr Peter White, "We are delighted to have received this grant from DFID to really help improve the lives of those in Haiti. With our partners we have made significant progress with PuR and we will continue to focus our efforts in countries where clean water is desperately needed".

Amelia Shaw, PSI Haiti added "In Gonaives, PSI distributed more than 410,000 sachets following the flooding last September. After using PUR regularly for one month, one woman from the flood zone commented, 'Before, my stomach hurt all the time. But now it doesn't hurt anymore. To think, I didn't even know you could live like that, without pain in your belly'".

Welcoming the announcement of the grant, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn said: "Hundreds of people have been killed and nearly half a million people have lost their homes in the aftermath of the floods in Haiti. Only ten per cent of Haitians get piped water in their homes so our contribution will help to ensure that those affected will now have access to safe drinking water. A water-borne disease such as diarrhoea kills nearly half of all infants in rural areas of Haiti but by working in partnership with P&G Health Science Institute and NGO's we will give people a better quality of life and hope for the future".