Fleet Laboratories Partners with Millennium Promise to Fight Dehydration in Africa
HydraLife® Offers Life-Saving Oral Rehydration Therapy for Villages in Ghana and Senegal.
LYNCHBURG, Va. (November 16, 2007) - Fleet Laboratories is partnering with Millennium Promise, an organization focused on ending extreme poverty in Africa, to improve the health of people in some of the poorest communities in sub-Saharan Africa. The company's HydraLife® Oral Rehydration product will be donated to two villages in Ghana and Senegal, where Millennium Promise is operating, to address dehydration, a common cause of death in impoverished Africa.
"Dehydration is a major concern in Africa, and oral hydration products will make a very real difference in saving lives there," said Jeffrey Flug, Millennium Promise Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. "This partnership is a wonderful example of committed corporations providing real-time solutions to key problems that contribute to extreme poverty in Africa."
Fleet Laboratories is donating 144,000 servings of HydraLife®, a ready-to-mix powder designed to quickly replace lost fluids. HydraLife® was introduced in 2006 to specifically address medical rehydration. The product contains more electrolytes with less sugar and calories than the other leading US brands.
"We're proud to be able to support the important work that Millennium Promise is doing," said Sarah Post, senior vice president of global scientific affairs. "Through a focused investment in small communities, this organization is having an impact on reducing death and serious illness caused by common, preventable and treatable health concerns such as diarrhea."
Millennium Promise has taken a village by village approach to help rural Africa achieve the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight globally endorsed objectives designed to reduce extreme poverty in Africa by 2015. The organization's flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages, applies scientific research, economic analysis, and international development expertise to the practical achievement of the MDGs at the rural level. To date, the project has reached nearly 400,000 people in 79 villages across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa by taking a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by addressing, food, water, health, education, and infrastructure needs all at once.
The HydraLife® donation will be shared by Millennium Villages in Bonsaaso, Ghana and Potou, Senegal, identified as having the greatest need for oral rehydration therapy. Bonsaaso is faced with severe malnutrition, which can lead to more intense, prolonged and frequent diarrhea. Potou does not have a nearby health center to deal with its most common health problems that include malaria, anemia, pneumonia and diarrhea.
About Fleet Laboratories
The Fleet® line of products began in 1869 when Dr. Charles Browne Fleet established Fleet pharmacy - a small, family-owned pharmacy committed to giving customers a quality product and experience every time they walked through the front door. Today, more than 100 years later, we continue to build on Dr. Fleet's commitment to excellence. We manufacture many innovative products out of our 290,000-square-foot facility in Lynchburg, Virginia and other sites around the world. As large as we've become, we still like to think of ourselves as a small, hometown pharmacy here to answer our customer's needs. This vision, along with a strong work ethic and quality products, has earned Fleet® the distinction of being named the number one laxative brand in units sold in the United States¹.
About Millennium Promise
The mission of Millennium Promise is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa by 2015. The MDGs are eight globally-endorsed objectives and targets that both address and seek to eradicate the many dimensions of extreme poverty. To that end, Millennium Promise is working with impoverished communities, national and local governments, and partner organizations to implement high-impact programs aimed at transforming lives on the continent and engaging donor nations, corporations, and the general public in the effort to end extreme poverty. Our work is premised on the belief that, for the first time in history, our generation has the opportunity to end extreme poverty, hunger, and disease.
¹ ACNielsen 9/2007