LifeStraw® Wins Prestigious Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas

Advertising Giant and Judges Including Peter Gabriel, HRH Prince Hassan and Philippe Starck Recognize potential of LifeStraw® to Prevent Disease and Save Lives on Massive Scale

NEW YORK, NY -Vestergaard Frandsen, a European company developing and selling disease control textiles, was honored this evening as the recipient of the 2008 Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas. The award, presented by HRH Princess Badiya of Jordan, was accepted by Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of Vestergaard Frandsen.

The global Award is made biennially by Saatchi & Saatchi, who established the Award to recognise, celebrate and promote ideas that have the potential to change the world. The US $100,000 prize consists of US$50,000 cash and the equivalent of US$50,000 in Saatchi & Saatchi marketing consultancy.

"I am thrilled, and humbled, that our LifeStraw® water filtration device has been selected to receive this important and respected award," said Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen. "While it is deeply satisfying to reflect upon the accolades our product has earned, it's far more satisfying to know that LifeStraw® has been warmly embraced and used to save the lives of countless numbers of people who lack access to clean and safe drinking water."

About half of the world's poor suffer from waterborne diseases. Everyday, 6,000 people, mostly children, die from water-related illnesses. In addition, the long journey often required to get clean water robs millions of young women and girls of their dignity, energy, educational potential and time.

LifeStraw® is a mobile, personal water-purification tool that turns even the dirtiest water into safe drinking water. It contains a specially developed halogen-based resin that kills 99.9999% of bacteria and 98.7% of viruses that can cause deadly diseases. LifeStraw® is highly portable and less than 10 inches long, which is useful for reducing the need to travel long distances to central water wells. It requires no power or spare parts and can filter up to 700 litres of water - around one year's supply.

LifeStraw® is a complimentary device to the newly launched LifeStraw® Family, a product providing safe and clean drinking water for the home. LifeStraw® Family is also designed to be very user-friendly, requiring no electricity, batteries, or spare parts and will provide two year's worth of homemade drinking water for a typical family.

For the more than one billion people who lack access to safe drinking water, LifeStraw® could mean the difference between life and death. It has particular importance for women, children and people with compromised immune systems, who are especially susceptible to waterborne diseases.

Bob Isherwood, Saatchi & Saatchi's Worldwide Creative Director and the convenor of the Award said, "The finalists were an extraordinary selection of inspired and inspiring ideas. The fact that amongst the finalists, a reusable IV flow controller was competing with a way of using inkjet technology to print skin and bones, a brain-computer interface which allows totally paralyzed people to communicate and control their environment and lives, and a laptop that will help children throughout the developing world, demonstrates how innovation is at the heart of every human activity."

The high-profile panel of judges included Edward de Bono, Peter Gabriel, HRH Prince Hassan, Malcolm McLaren, Carolyn Porco and Philippe Starck. They were briefed by Isherwood to choose the idea they believed had the potential to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people or to a group of people with a particular need.

Judge Peter Gabriel, commented, "LifeStraw® is a very simple and elegant solution to a problem that kills millions of people. Let's get it out there."

LifeStraw® has earned many awards and accolades, including 'One of the Ten Things that will Change the Way We Live´ by Forbes Magazine; `Best Invention of 2005´ by Time Magazine, and `Innovation of the Year´ by Esquire Magazine.