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PUR Relief Provided in the Dominican Republic SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — In the wake of a devastating tropical storm, PSI/Dominican Republic joined with government and NGO partners to distribute life-saving water purification sachets throughout the country. Tropical Storm Noel pounded the Dominican Republic (DR) with strong winds and rain for three days at the end of October. The resulting floods left over 100 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and the country’s transport, electric and sanitation infrastructure destroyed or badly damaged, making Noel the worst disaster the country has seen in 50 years. During the storm, PSI/DR contacted its many partners with the message that they stood ready to respond by providing the PUR Purifier of Water product to thousands of people left without safe drinking water in the wake of the floods. Two days after the storm, the USAID mission’s head disaster response official called to inform PSI/DR that the U.S. government wished to purchase our entire 900,000-sachet stock of PUR for immediate distribution via government and NGO partners in the most affected areas. The following day, members of the PSI/DR staff and others worked all day to assemble PUR demo kits and support materials, load and unload nearly 4,000 boxes of the PUR product, and distribute all of it to the USAID warehouse, the Ministry of Health, and the primary Dominican Air Force base in Santo Domingo for immediate redistribution via truck and helicopter to communities in dire need of drinking water. That same evening, a team of PSI/DR educators set out with a jeep full of PUR, demo kits and support materials in advance of the helicopters to train representatives from the DR government and NGO response teams, including those from Peace Corps, World Vision and FUNDASUR. The PSI/DR PUR training team has been in constant motion around the country ever since, training NGO representatives, giving demonstrations and sensitizing community members. To date, the PSI team has been in 15 communities, trained 84 NGO and government representatives and given more than 20 demonstrations reaching over 600 people. It will be months before a semblance of normalcy returns to many parts of the Dominican Republic and the need for PUR’s unique water purification technology for household drinking water is sure to continue. PSI/DR is continuing to work closely with USAID and other partners to minimize the risk of diarrheal disease outbreaks in this period by importing more PUR from the emergency Latin America stock in our Panama warehouse and continuing to distribute both the product and the necessary training and education to ensure its proper use. — Chuck Szymanski, Country Representative, Dominican Republic
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