Delivering Clean Water to Earthquake Stricken Haiti: Corporate, NGO and US Government relief and recovery efforts
March 24, 2010
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington, DC
Washington, DC – On March 24, 2010, the Women's Foreign Policy Group held a panel discussion on the challenge of delivering clean drinking water to Haiti in the aftermath of the January 12th earthquake with representatives of the private, NGO, and public sectors. The speakers included Dr. Greg Allgood, Director of Procter & Gamble's (P&G) Children's Safe Drinking Water Program; Ambassador Sally Cowal, Senior Vice President and Chief Liaison Officer of Population Services International (PSI); and Dr. Eric Mintz, Team Lead for Global WASH Epidemiology of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Allgood, who was in Haiti right after the earthquake, called the destruction in Haiti "far worse than anything I have ever seen." He demonstrated the effectiveness of P&G's PUR Water Packets in transforming dirty, bacteria-laden water into healthy water and discussed his company's efforts to provide over one million of those packets to Haiti. Cowal spoke of harnessing Haiti's entrepreneurs, assisting them in selling water treatment products for a profit and "ensuring the products remain available to those who need them long after ... the world turns its attention to the next crisis." Mintz detailed how the CDC, in collaboration with Google and other federal agencies, have been able to use new and innovative mapping technology to look at population density and superimpose things like water distribution on it in order to locate areas with drinking water supply problems, as well as those areas with standing water or at risk for flooding.
All of the panelists agreed that Haiti's water problem did not originate with the earthquake, but they expressed hope that the nation would emerge from the disaster stronger than ever. As Allgood stated, "The resiliency of those people is amazing."
Greg Allgood, PhD
Ambassador Sally Cowal
Eric Mintz, MD, MPH
WFPG President Patricia Ellis
WFPG Board Member Carolyn Brehm with Amb. Josefina Pitra Diakite of Angola
WFPG Vice Chair Gail Leftwich Kitch
WFPG Secretary Donna Constantinople
This program was made possible by the generous support of Corporate Advisory Council member Procter & Gamble.
