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Dominican Republic: P&G, PSI Launch New Approach to Ensure Safe
Drinking Water CINCINATTI, OH, Feb. 9, 2006 — Procter & Gamble and PSI announced today a new marketing approach to bring PUR Purifier of Water® to people in the Dominican Republic. This approach will combine the forces of P&G's commercial distribution system with PSI's network of community groups. This humanitarian, not-for-profit effort will provide a sustainable solution to address the fact that one out of every eight young children in the Dominican Republic suffer from diarrhea caused by contaminated water. "This unique partnership brings together the social marketing expertise of PSI with the proven distribution capabilities of the private sector in order to provide bottom-line health benefits to Dominican children," stated PSI Senior Vice President Sally Cowal. As part of P&G's focal philanthropy, the Children's Safe Drinking Water program, P&G is providing PUR sachets at a not-for-profit cost to PSI who will then use a novel four-tier strategy to provide PUR in the Dominican Republic. Specifically, PSI will: 1. Conduct traditional social marketing with a multimedia brand awareness campaign and a network of community groups and educators, such as U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, to provide training on safe drinking water. PSI is already providing PUR in Haiti and Uganda using this social marketing approach and has provided 2 million sachets in the first year. 2. Distribute PUR through P&G's distributor, Corripio, who will ensure the product is widely available and provide free air-time on their four affiliated television stations as part of this humanitarian effort. 3. Distribute PUR through P&G's pharmacy distributor, Daniel Espinal, who announced today that they will pilot a social program with their own employees and with their mid- and high-end stores by providing a collection container for donation of PUR sachets to the most needy. 4. Provide PUR to emergency relief agencies for the victims of the frequent floods and hurricanes that hit the region. "P&G has recently stepped up our efforts to help children in need, including this provision of PUR sachets to help Dominican children," said Greg Allgood, PhD, director of the Children's Safe Drinking Water Program at P&G. "We've provided more than 200 million liters of safe drinking water during the last year and expect this need will grow." PUR, which was developed jointly by Procter & Gamble and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “represents a good example of public-private collaboration and also demonstrates how the government can work side by side with private companies in order to offer greater benefits to society,” said Hans Hertell, U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic in a launch event for the safe drinking water effort in Santo Domingo. PUR has been shown to reduce diarrheal illness by an average 50% in controlled health intervention studies. PUR will be provided to consumers in a sachet that treats 10 liters of water and will cost about $0.13 per sachet (5 Dominican pesos).
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