By Sola Ogundipe & Chioma Obinna
AS Nigerians continued to struggle for  portable drinking water, expert has said that no fewer than 1 billion  people in the developing world, including Nigeria  have no access to portable water and 80 per cent of diseases are water -related.

Also, statistics available have shown that almost 2.2 million lives are lost due to diarrheal diseases annually, with more than four billion disease episodes, globally.

It is in this context, United Nations, has established the MDG of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water, and reducing by two-third the mortality of children under five years, by 2015.

However, to curb the health problems that arise due to lack of clean water,  Unilever Nigeria Plc has introduced a scientifically proven germ killer water purifier called “Pureit”.

Pureit works with a break-through “Germkill Technology”  and  has  an  advanced  multi-stage purification process  which provides  water  that’s completely  free  from  all  harmful germs, thus  giving 100  per cent  protection  from  all  water-borne diseases. It provides high quality water at an affordable price.

At the launch of  Pureit, the Managing Director,  Unilever  Nigeria  Plc , Mr Thabo Mabe                      who enumerated the importance of safe drinking water noted that studies   have found that safe water  improves many health conditions such as   chronic  exhaustion,  poor  nutrient absorption,  impaired  toxins removal, poor nutrients circulation, angina, heartburn, hypertension  impaired immune system and many more.

Mabe said “Other benefits of clean drinking water daily are related to better functioning of the kidneys.  Kidneys need water to filter out waste and toxins from the body. Lack of clean water would allow the kidneys to dump their work to the liver and what happens next is that the liver will not perform as well by not metabolizing the fat as it should do and consequently   leads to an impaired immune system.”

He noted that Pureit provides water with “Complete Germ Protection” which ensures freedom against all water-borne diseases like jaundice, diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera etc by removing all harmful viruses and bacteria from your drinking water.

It provides water that meets the safety norms of one of the world’s most stringent regulatory authorities, i.e. of Environmental Protection Agency (USA), without needing any running water or electricity and at a fraction of the cost of dispenser bottles and boiled water.

On the current water challenges in the country through innovative technologies, the Director General of Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency, represented by Olufemi Bejide,said the contribution of Unilever through the introduction of Purit would no doubt impact positively in the lives of the citizenry in terms of making available safe drinking water.