PSI/Myanmar’s Water Work

While we at GSI's Global Water Futures project are dedicated to promoting far-sighted thinking about the growing imbalance between global water supply and demand, our friends at Population Services International (PSI) are on the ground helping to turn water that harbors bacteria and causes cholera, diarrhea and other fatal diseases into water that saves lives. Most recently, after Cyclone Nargis ravaged the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar PSI’s headquarters in Yangon became a distribution point providing the simple chlorine solution, WaterGuard, to international and local NGOs, UN agencies, as well as private individuals organizing deliveries.

Through this collaboration, PSI/Myanmar provided enough free solution to treat one month’s worth of drinking water for nearly 1.6 million people. Not only did PSI/Myanmar provide cyclone victims with an inexpensive, in-country produced product, PSI’s Water Works newsletter notes that they harnessed the power of “personal and professional partnerships, between friends, colleagues, loved ones and strangers on the street…to manage this catastrophe together” - a strategy to keep in mind for future disasters affecting water supply.