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Nairobi City County Governor Dr. Evans Kidero together with SWAP Rose Odhiambo and Procter & Gamble’s Irene Mwathi during
the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Clean Safe Drinking Water
program in Kenya
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Procter & Gamble (P&G) has marked a decade
of providing clean water by leveraging a tiny packet in a big way for the one
billion people who still live without clean drinking water in Kenya.
P&G has also announced an investment of 100
million shillings investment that will provide another 100 million liters of
clean water to more than 100,000 Kenyan people in the coming year.
“Through the Childrens' Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) program we will be expanding our
school and health clinic work with CARE into Migori County in Western Kenya
which has suffered a recent Cholera outbreak,” said P&G Managing Director
Iacopo Pazzi.
Pazzi added that the CSDW will also expand its
partnership with S.A.F.E. Kenya to educate more people about water and health
issues in the Coastal Region through community theatre programmes as well as
ChildFund which will focus on households in Eastern Kenya who have unsafe
drinking water from open sources.
Speaking upon receiving a donation of one million
liters of clean drinking water, Nairobi City County Governor Dr. Evans Kidero
said that donation would help address the current cholera outbreak in
Mathare and Huruma and future emergencies among the communities that cause
water in this particular settlement to be turbid.
“I have instructed the County Executive for Health
to work with Population Services Kenya to find the most optimal way of
distributing the sachets to ensure maximum coverage and protect the children of
this County from diarrheal illnesses,” said Dr. Kidero.
Currently,
of the about 3.6 million residents of Nairobi, only half have direct access to
piped water. The rest obtain water from kiosks, vendors and illegal
connections. Of the existing customers, about 40 per cent receive water on a
24-hour basis. Westlands, which has the highest number of its residents with
access to tapped water in their dwellings, is at a low 34.5 per cent. Reliance
on water vendors is at its highest Nairobi East and Nairobi West, which are at
22.2 per cent and 19.8 per cent, respectively.
P&G began providing clean drinking water in
Kenya, Guatemala and Pakistan through powder technology that kills deadly
viruses and bacteria and removes dirt, parasites and other pollutants, making
contaminated water clean and drinkable. Since 2004, P&G Purifier of Water
(formerly Pur) packets have been shared in more than 75 countries and the
program has grown to include a network of more than 150 partners.
Scientists trying to purify used laundry water
developed the technology that puts the power of a water treatment plant into a
tiny packet. Today, the P&G Packets enable families in developing countries
to make clean drinking water in 30 minutes.
“The idea of billions of liters can be hard to
comprehend, but when you meet the people whose lives have been changed by clean
drinking water you understand just how important it is that we continue to
invest in the future of Kenya through this program and brands like Always,
Ariel and Pampers.” Pazzi concluded.
P&G partnered with CARE Kenya to share clean
drinking water with a 13-year-old boy named Boniface Otieno and his family. At
his school in Bondo, Kenya, the 13 year old helps teach fellow students to use
the P&G Purifier of Water Packets and about the importance of hand washing
and proper sanitation. Through the support of P&G and CARE Kenya, children
like Boniface Otieno became agents of change who take what they learned at
school back home to transform the health and lives of their communities.
“We've been honored to be on this ten-year journey
with P&G,” said Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE. “We’ve seen these
tiny packets have a huge impact on health. Coupled with CARE’s community-based
approaches for accessing clean water, improving hand-washing and creating
behavior change, P&G’s technology is an incredible tool. It’s an innovation
that is helping improve quality of life for millions of people.”
Working with Population Services International,
CARE, ChildFund, Save the Children, World Vision, and others, P&G supports
ongoing programs and disaster relief around the world. By providing clean
drinking water for a decade, P&G and its partners have helped save an
estimated 45,000 lives and prevented more than 340 million days of illness.
Visit the csdw.org
to find out how you can be a part of this work and help provide clean drinking
water to those who need it most.
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