Over 8100 families set to benefit from clean safe drinking water in Machakos and Kitui counties

Irene Mwathi (Left) from Procter &Gamble observes Grace Mueni stirring turbid water during water purifaction outreach in Machakos County

Over 8,100 families will be provided with clean safe drinking water through Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) Purifier of Water and ChildFund’s Safe Water system program in Eastern Kenya region aimed at reducing the occurrence of water borne diseases.

The program aims at providing water purifiers free of charge as well as education on safe drinking water to reach an estimated 40,500 direct beneficiaries in Wamunyu, Mwala, Migwani, and Ngwatanio areas all from Machakos and Kitui counties.  

“The Children’s Safe Drinking Water program has been around for about a decade now and has mostly been concentrated in Nyanza and Western Region. We are now expanding this program as we know the situation is quite dire and our sachets will offer the much needed solution,” said Ms. Miheso.

This follows an earlier commitment by P&G to provide over 10 million litres of clean safe drinking water in Kenya through an investment of over $1 million dollars. This is part of the company’s commitment to provide enough clean water to save one life every hour in the world by 2020.

The Safe Water System (SWS) is an inexpensive program of providing safe water at point of use through treatment, safe storage and behavior change. The system makes use of the P&G Purifier of Water sachet which is a powdered mixture which purifies previously dirty and turbid water making it safe for drinking. In Kenya, SWS has provided over 3.5 million sachets of water supplies translating to 40,571,180 liters of safe drinking water to over 18,000 families.

ChildFund’s National Director Ms. Virginia Vargas said that the project is mainly aimed at people who use water from earthen dams, sand dams and rivers by providing an easy, adoptable, simple, effective technology to purify water for affected populations.

“Water and sanitation improvements, in association with hygiene behaviour change, have significant effects on population and health by reducing a variety of disease conditions such as diarrhea, intestinal helminthes, and Guinea worm and skin diseases. We hope that the SWS program will lead to reduced water borne diseases in the region,” added Ms. Vargas.

Studies done on the P&G purifier of water show that the use of these packets can reduce diarrheal illnesses in children by an average of 50% and help save lives.

To date, P&G has delivered over 750 million liters of clean drinking water in Kenya and more than 8 billion liters globally