P&G and PSI Announce New Marketing Approach to Bring Safe Drinking Water to Dominicans

CINCINNATI, Feb. 8, 2006 /PRNewswire/ -- Procter & Gamble and Population Services International (PSI), a non-profit and non-governmental organization, announced today a new marketing approach to bring PUR Purifier of Water(R) to people in the Dominican Republic. This approach will combine the forces of P&G's commercial distribution system with PSI's network of community groups. This humanitarian, not-for-profit effort will provide a sustainable solution to address the fact that one out of every eight young children in the DR suffer from diarrhea caused by contaminated water.

"This unique partnership brings together the social marketing expertise of PSI with the proven distribution capabilities of the private sector in order to provide bottom-line health benefits to Dominican children," stated PSI Senior Vice President Sally Cowal.

As part of P&G's focal philanthropy, the Children's Safe Drinking Water program, P&G is providing PUR sachets at a not-for-profit cost to PSI who will then use a novel four-tier strategy to provide PUR in the Dominican Republic. Specifically, PSI will:

1. Conduct traditional social marketing with a multimedia brand awareness campaign and a network of community groups and educators, such as U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, to provide training on safe drinking water. PSI is already providing PUR in Haiti and Uganda using this social marketing approach and has provided 2 million sachets in the first year.

2. Distribute PUR through P&G's distributor, Corripio, who will ensure the product is widely available and provide free air-time on their four affiliated television stations as part of this humanitarian effort.

3. Distribute PUR through P&G's pharmacy distributor, Daniel Espinal, who announced today that they will pilot a social program with their own employees and with their mid- and high-end stores by providing a collection container for donation of PUR sachets to the most needy.

4. Provide PUR to emergency relief agencies for the victims of the frequent floods and hurricanes that hit the region.

"P&G has recently stepped up our efforts to help children in need, including this provision of PUR sachets to help Dominican children," said Greg Allgood, PhD, director of the Children's Safe Drinking Water Program at P&G. "We've provided more than 200 million liters of safe drinking water during the last year and expect this need will grow."

PUR, which was developed jointly by Procter & Gamble and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, "represents a good example of public- private collaboration and also demonstrates how the government can work side by side with private companies in order to offer greater benefits to society," said Hans Hertell, U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic in a launch event for the safe drinking water effort in Santo Domingo. PUR has been shown to reduce diarrheal illness by an average 50% in controlled health intervention studies. PUR will be provided to consumers in a sachet that treats 10 liters of water and will cost about $0.13 per sachet (5 Dominican pesos).

Procter & Gamble

Three billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers(R), Tide(R), Ariel(R), Always(R), Whisper(R), Pantene(R), Mach3(R), Bounty(R), Dawn(R), Pringles(R), Folgers(R), Charmin(R), Downy(R), Lenor(R), Iams(R), Crest(R), Oral-B(R), Actonel(R), Duracell(R), Olay(R), Head & Shoulders(R), Wella, Gillette(R), and Braun. The P&G community consists of almost 140,000 employees working in over 80 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

PUR Purifier of Water(R) was developed in cooperation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and has been shown to significantly reduce diarrheal illness in the developing world. More information about the technology can be found at www.pghsi.com.

Population Services International (PSI)

PSI is a non-profit organization that applies commercial tools to a social mission in order to achieve measurable health impact. Since 1972, PSI has improved the health and saved the lives of millions of poor and vulnerable people in measurable ways. Through health programs in 65 countries on five continents, PSI distributes affordable, accessible and attractive health products and services, and motivates other types of healthy behavior, in HIV/AIDS, family planning, malaria, safe water and nutrition. In 2005, PSI's safe water programs prevented an estimated 12 million episodes of diarrhea and the deaths of 36,000 children.

For further information, please contact: Greg Allgood, PhD, Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, 1-513-983-1223 1-513-602-7719 (mobile) allgood.gs@pg.com Sally Cowal, Senior Vice President, Washington, DC, 1-202-572-4612 scowal@psi.org

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