International Action made four very important chlorinator installations in December. Two of the installations were at Port-au-Prince schools: the Ecole Mixte Ittanie and the Collège mixte Excelsior. Both schools enroll over 200 students. The Ecole mixte Ittanie takes in the most impoverished children in the area. Both schools were given a water tank, an LF 1000 chlorinator, chlorine residual testing kits, and chlorine tablets.
The Saint Marc Parish received a 2000-gallon water tank and a chlorinator. Fifty priests and about forty temporary missionaries live in the parish. The directors of the parish will oversee the use of external water spigots to which the surrounding neighborhoods will have access.
Finally, International Action has continued its expansion into the Sud-Est department of Haiti. In collaboration with Architecture for Humanity we recently installed a chlorinator and 2000-gallon water tank at the Ecole Communautaire la Dignité, in Jacmel.
Additionally, we restocked functioning chlorinators with chlorine tablets during December, so that communities could ring in the New Year safe, protected from cholera.
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About internationalaction
Some 1.2 billion people in developing countries lack safe water to drink, according to the United Nations. Over half the hospital beds in poor countries are occupied by people with preventable diseases from unsafe water. At least 2 million people -- most of them infants and children -- die annually from waterborne disease. Unsafe water is now the single largest cause of illness worldwide. Installation of our new special chlorinators worldwide could reduce these numbers dramatically. Only two hours south of Miami, Haiti is an excellent location to demonstrate our new chlorine system. The World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, U.S. AID, the U.N. Development Program, and many important non-governmental groups, all, work in Haiti. We have taken the staff from several of these institutions to visit our sites, and will continue this effort. Through them, we hope to spread the use of our new chlorine technology and organization techniques to Asia, Africa and elsewhere in Latin America.
THE PROBLEM: In Haiti, contaminated water is the leading cause of infant mortality and illness in children. Germs for hepatitis, cholera, and chronic diarrhea are carried in water used for cooking and drinking. Nearly every water source in Haiti has become contaminated with human waste because of the absence of a sewage sanitation system.
Haiti now has the highest infant mortality rate in the western hemisphere. The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) reported that more than half of all deaths in Haiti were due to water-borne gastro-intestinal diseases.
THE SOLUTION: Our chlorinators provide reliable water protection. Tablet chlorinators provide a steady, preset level of chlorination persists in the water for many days. This provides dependable protection against the disease-causing bacteria common in the buckets, home storage tanks, and local piping in poor communities.
Chlorination is safe and easy to maintain, and no electricity is needed. Unlike gas and liquid chlorine, which are dangerous and unstable, our chlorine tablets are stable enough to store in difficult conditions and safe enough to be handled by amateurs.
