Clean water for Pakistan

A SOUTH-EAST company has joined an international campaign to bring clean water to Pakistan.

Manufacturer of water purification tablets Medentech is to play a big part in the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) campaign to improve health among people in Pakistan.

Responsible for the manufacturer of Aquatabs, Medentech joins Unilever and phone messaging service Mobilink in signing three “memorandums of understanding” with USAID.

“USAID is helping Pakistani communities to have access to clean water and adopt sanitary practices that save lives,” said Kathleen McDonald of USAID.

By signing the agreement, Medentech will ensure a large number of households will have easy access to the Aquatabs water purification tablets.

Medentech was represented at the project launch ceremony in Islamabad by sales and marketing head Michael Gately who said the company is looking forward to participating in a programme which promises to have an enormous positive effect on the lives of millions of people in Pakistan.

“This initiative in Pakistan will help to lower the 1.8 million deaths globally — mainly among children under the age of five — who die each year from water-borne diarrhoeal diseases,” said Mr Gately.

The Pakistan project is the latest milestone in Medentech’s goal to make Aquatabs available in countries where large percentages of the population do not have access to safe drinking water, he added.

“This programme will bring us closer to our aim of providing safe drinking water to 7m people daily by the end of 2008,” he said.