Fifteen counties in Kenya are to benefit from the provision of clean drinking water as Procter & Gamble (P&G) implements its Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) Program. The announcement is part of the company’s celebration of 25 years of operation in Kenya.
More than 20% of the upcoming support will provide humanitarian assistance in Wajir County to address Kenya’s severe drought conditions that persisted in 2017, following at least four consecutive poor rainy seasons since December 2015. According to the Short Rains Assessment (SRA) findings released in March 2018, an estimated 2.55 million people are still in need of humanitarian assistance in Kenya.
Fifteen counties that include Machakos, Kajiado, Taita Taveta, Narok, Kisumu, Isiolo, Marsarbit, Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet, Samburu, Lakipia, Muranga, Homa Bay and Makueni will benefit from more than 100 million litres of clean drinking water.
“Drought has also impacted negatively on the communities’ health and local food security. He added that water scarcity is severely disrupting the lives of communities with the most vulnerable being the elderly, the sick, mothers and children under 5 years of age,” says Mr. Vivek Sunder, Managing Director of P&G Kenya.
The P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, which has been in effect in Kenya for over 13 years, has provided more than 1 billion liters of clean drinking water to rural and peri-urban communities. The program utilizes P&G Purifier of Water sachets, a low-cost powdered technology in a packet that is designed to purify heavily contaminated drinking water and so it meets WHO standards for safe drinking water.
The announcement was made at the screening of a new P&G documentary, The Power of Clean Water, which was produced in partnership with National Geographic and vividly tells the story of communities that lack access to clean drinking water as well as the progress that has been made by the government, NGOs and the private sector in addressing this need.
P&G scientists in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) invented P&G’s Purifier of Water. Each 4-gram packet of P&G Purifier of Water turns 10 liters of dirty, potentially deadly water into clean and drinkable water in only 30 minutes.