UNC and P&G deliver 5 billionth liter of drinking water in Malawi
| September 21, 2012 | |
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On Sept. 18, Procter & Gamble (P&G) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that their collaboration has delivered a total of five billion liters of clean drinking water to those in need.
Dr. Greg Allgood (left) and Mr. Innocent Mofolo (center, back) deliver the celebratory cup of clean water to Lusiya Daniel and her family in Malawi.
Greg Allgood, MSPH, PhD, alumnus of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and director of the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, and Innocent Mofolo, MSc, administrative manager with UNC Project–Malawi, delivered the 5 billionth liter of clean water to Lusiya Daniel and her family in Lilongwe, Malawi. “We have teamed up with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program in a cross-campus collaboration that is saving thousands of lives in Malawi by providing clean drinking water,” said Myron Cohen, MD, director of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases and professor of epidemiology at UNC’s public health school. “This far-reaching collaboration is providing service and research opportunities for our students and making a powerful impact on the lives they touch through their work.”
The UNC-P&G collaboration has reached tens of thousands of women and children – women in Lusiya Daniel’s situation. Each day, Daniel collects water from a highly contaminated local well for herself and her nine children. Through the program, she receives “P&G packets,” a water-purifying technology developed by P&G and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Stories like Lusiya’s reaffirm the importance of forming innovative partnerships to solve complex problems,” Allgood said. “P&G’s technology combined with the expertise of UNC’s Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases created a powerful solution that continues to help save lives and prevent the spread of diseases.”
By providing 5 billion liters of clean drinking water in developing countries, an estimated 200 million days of illness and more than 26,000 lives have been saved by the CSDW Program. The milestone marks progress toward P&G’s commitment to scale up efforts to share clean water and save one life every hour by 2020 by providing 2 billion liters of clean water every year.
The timing of the UNC-P&G announcement coincides with the beginning of UNC’s new two-year campus-wide theme, “Water in our World.” The UNC initiative highlights the importance of global access to safe water, as clean drinking water impacts health, the economy and social development.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Linda Kastleman, communications editor, (919) 966-8317 or linda_kastleman@unc.edu.
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