packets fight cholera in Zimbabwe

A life-saving partnership between World Vision and Procter & Gamble is providing millions of litres of clean water — and saving countless lives.
By Rachael Boyer, World Vision U.S

It’s an amazing little packet. In half an hour, it can change 10 litres of dirty, potentially deadly water into clean, drinkable water. It’s small, easy to ship, and easy to use.

And it’s helping to save lives in Zimbabwe, where last year’s cholera epidemic added even more difficulties to a population dealing with political instability and the highest economic inflation rates in the world.

Developed by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in collaboration with the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, packets remove 99.9 per cent of intestinal bacteria, including those that cause cholera, and 99.9 per cent of intestinal viruses and protozoa. These qualities made packets ideal for helping World Vision respond to the 2008 Zimbabwean cholera epidemic, where contaminated water sources caused the disease to spread rapidly.

Dr. Greg Allgood, the director of P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Programme (CSDW), was instrumental in turning the programme and distribution of packets into a non-profit. He now travels around the world, distributing packets and giving careful instructions on how to use them.

Seeing the problem up close

In August, Allgood travelled to Zimbabwe to see how the packets that the CSDW donated and World Vision distributed were helping people avoid cholera. But he also had a second goal to the trip — to give high-risk communities enough packets and training to help them avoid cholera as the next rainy season approaches.

He chronicles the trip on his blog, telling about the families and World Vision staff members he met in rural Zimbabwe, where clean water is very hard to find.

World Vision’s Bwalya Melu showed Allgood around and explained that in his area of Zimbabwe, 70 per cent of the population gets its water from an unprotected source, like a contaminated river. So, Allgood visited such a river, seeing how people dug holes in the sand next to the river before they drew their water, hoping that the sand would provide a layer of filtering protection.

But they couldn’t see the potentially deadly bacteria that were still lingering in the water.

With the help of Chiweshe, a local chief nurse and health educator, the team demonstrated how to use a packet to turn contaminated river water into clean, safe water within 30 minutes.

Allgood and Melu also met families who barely survived the last cholera outbreak and who are grateful to now have access to clean water because of the packets.

Celebrating partnership

A month after his trip, Allgood attended a Clinton Global Initiative event on Sept 30, where he and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist presented the Live, Learn, and Thrive Partnership Award to World Vision.

The award was for partnering with CSDW to respond to the cholera crisis in Zimbabwe by reaching more than 250,000 people. At the height of the cholera epidemic, World Vision collaborated with P&G, AmeriCares, and others to provide more than 25 million litres of safe drinking water using the packets. Rich Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., accepted the award on World Vision’s behalf.