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Public-Private Partners to Spend $5 Million Globally for Safe
Water USAID and various public and private partners have launched a collaboration that will work globally to ensure the safety of drinking water. The partnership was announced April 22 at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in New York. Following is a release on the alliance: (begin text) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE USAID and Partners Form a $5 Million Alliance for Safe Drinking Water Safe Drinking Water Alliance Launched at the United Nations NEW YORK -- A strategic public-private collaboration devoted to ensuring safe drinking water was officially launched today at the United Nations' Commission on Sustainable Development meeting in New York. The Safe Drinking Water Alliance will receive $1.4 million over the next 18 months from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Global Development Alliance, an initiative to promote partnerships such as this in the developing world. 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. The Alliance is designed to develop innovative approaches for ensuring the safety of drinking water. USAID, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs (CCP), CARE, Population Services International (PSI), and Procter & Gamble joined forces 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 to identify opportunities for scaling up successful efforts to ensure safe drinking water. "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 (GDA). "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. Pakistan Haiti Emergency Relief - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - USAID is an independent agency of the U.S. government that provides
economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world
in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States. USAID
has offices in Washington DC and in over 80 countries worldwide.
The Global Development Alliance represents an important new business
model for USAID. GDA mobilizes the ideas, efforts, and resources
of governments, businesses, and civil society by forging public-private
alliances to stimulate economic growth, develop businesses and
workforces, address health and environmental issues, and expand
access to education and technology. Responding to the fact that
the majority of resource flows from the developed to the developing
world is through private channels, not government, this approach
extends USAID's reach and effectiveness in meeting development
objectives by combining its strengths with the resources and capabilities
of other prominent actors. USAID's Bureau for Global Health has
made water quality improvement a key component of its environmental
health agenda, working with the GDA as well as private sector commercial
and non-profit partners and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)
provides humanitarian assistance to save lives, alleviate human
suffering, and reduce the social and economic impact of natural
and man-made disasters worldwide. http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/ Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication
Programs (CCP) is a pioneer in the field of strategic, research-based
communication for behavior change and health promotion that has
helped transform the theory and practice of public health. www.jhuccp.org.
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