PSI/Myanmar staff work quickly
to get WaterGuard safe water
treatment to the survivors of
cyclone Nargis.
YANGON, Myanmar, May 24, 2008 – PSI/Myanmar is providing free safe water treatment to all relief and disaster organizations that need it, and coordinating those actions with United Nations emergency response teams, in response to the devastating cyclone that hit Myanmar. Through collaboration with the UN, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others, PSI has provided nearly 1,500 20L and 1,050 250ml bottles of Waterguard for the purification of water, which is enough to deliver clean water to over 1,000,000 people for one month.
The government of Myanmar has now raised the official death toll to 77,738 and approximately 56,000 persons are still missing.
PSI, one of the largest NGOs working in Myanmar, is putting its efforts into ensuring access to safe water to survivors. PSI is producing as many 20-liter bottles of a safe water treatment product called WaterGuard as possible and distributing it to other organizations helping the survivors. Emergency relief workers from NGOs and UN agencies are departing Yangon daily to provide urgently needed commodities to the worst-affected areas of the Irrawaddy Delta region.
PSI has a social marketing infrastructure in 300 of the 326 townships in Myanmar as well as its Sun Quality Health (SQH) network of private clinics in 126 townships. Over 300 SQH doctors are based in the affected region. PSI’s relationship with these 300 doctors allowed it to be one of the first organizations to get health care out to the affected areas.
PSI is continuously assessing the situation of all SQH doctors in the region and providing them with essential medicines and health supplies so that they, too, can offer services for free during the crisis. A partnership with other NGOs is aiming to use multiple technologies (re-establishing access to tube wells, drilling tube wells and treating water with WaterGuard) to make SQH clinics central sources of clean drinking water in their communities.
PSI has temporarily converted its drop-in centers and voluntary counseling & testing center into basic health care clinics to provide essential care for the affected populations.
Reports of respiratory infections, severe diarrhea and other gastrointestinal ailments are common amongst those who avoided injury during the cyclone.
Although PSI is not known as a relief or disaster agency, it has considerable experience in distributing safe water products in disaster situations, including floods in Haiti, the tsunami in Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan. In 2007, PSI/Dominican Republic made one such water treatment product available in Latin America and the Caribbean to those suffering in the wake of devastating hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, or any other natural disasters requiring immediate access to safe water. With fully stocked warehouses in Panama, PSI responds rapidly to requests and ships product within 48 hours anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean. Read more about these efforts here.
PSI has been working in Myanmar since 1996 to achieve annual health impacts over a broad range of health areas that include treatment of 10,000 people for tuberculosis, 40,000 for malaria and reproductive health products and services for over 126,000 women. Mass media health messages reach over 11 million people per year in the country and HIV prevention activities provide over 20 million condoms nationwide while targeted personal outreach and client friendly safe spaces provide over 280,000 vulnerable individuals with in-depth person-to-person delivery of HIV prevention messages.
