U.S. Water News Online
NEW YORK -- PSI and several partners have launched the Safe Drinking Water Alliance, a new public-private initiative created to increase access to safe drinking water by low income people in developing countries. The Alliance will provide another opportunity for PSI to provide innovative approaches to fight diarrheal diseases, which account for an estimated 2 million child deaths every year.
PSI joins with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs (CCP), CARE and Procter & Gamble to leverage their respective expertise and resources to better understand the behaviors and motivations for choosing particular technologies for treating household water, to share the knowledge gained, and identify opportunities for scaling up successful efforts to provide safe drinking water.
The Safe Drinking Water Alliance, officially launched at the United Nations' Commission on Sustainable Development meeting, will receive $1.4 million over the next 18 months from USAID through the Global Development Alliance. USAID's financial contribution is leveraging substantial in-kind and financial contributions from Procter & Gamble (estimated at approximately $3.5 million), as well as technical and program support resources from other partners.
"We are delighted to support the Safe Drinking Water Alliance to help make water safe in Haiti, Pakistan, and elsewhere," said Holly Wise, director of USAID's Global Development Alliance. "This unique public-private partnership pools resources to attack a problem responsible for the death of an estimated 5,000 children per day around the globe, and USAID is proud to be a contributing partner."
About 1.1 billion people around the globe lack access to an improved water source, and even for those who do, unsanitary handling and storage means household water for drinking and food preparation is often unsafe. Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene practices cause the vast majority of diarrheal diseases, a leading killer of children under five that accounts for approximately 2 million child deaths every year. Water-borne infections such as cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery also burden the public health system and impose significant economic losses.
Low-cost solutions can dramatically improve the quality of existing household water used for drinking and cooking. Procter & Gamble has developed a new product, PuR, which purifies water using technology that has been found to be effective in improving water quality and preventing disease at the household level in developing countries. Reductions of 30% to 50% in diarrheal disease have been documented using such point-of-use treatment approaches, with even higher reductions during epidemic water-borne disease outbreaks.
The Alliance will test the acceptance of P&G's water treatment product using different approaches tailored to country need. Using these technologies in combination with behavior change strategies will help ensure safe water practices are sustained at the household level over the long term.
The Alliance members belong to the International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage, a global network of more than 20 organizations that recognizes the potential for using low-cost water quality interventions to reduce the risk of diarrhea disease and death. The Alliance will begin work in Pakistan, Haiti, and another to-be-determined country where an emergency limits access to safe drinking water.
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