Simple recipe can prevent child diarrhea deaths

Source: Agencies | March 10, 2009, Tuesday |

Print Edition

A PINCH of salt, a handful of sugar and some clean water is all that is needed to save up to 2 million children who die each year from diarrhea, the World Health Organization said yesterday.

Children in poor countries suffer the dehydrating condition on average about four times a year, according to the United Nations agency.

Instead of focusing on ways to stop diarrhea from striking, the WHO said health authorities ought to ensure care-givers know how to use the rehydrating recipe.

"Given the consequences of the disease in terms of persisting child mortality, the level of urgency in dealing with this problem is very different than for other chronic diseases," the authors of a study in the PLos Medicine journal said.

"This should be reflected in health research policies and investment strategies of the major donors."

Four children die every minute from diarrhea, which causes one-fifth of all child deaths worldwide, with most concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

"We have very effective products. The problem is not now to develop new products," WHO child health expert Olivier Fontaine, one of the authors of the PLos study told a Geneva news briefing. "We have to find ways of delivering this product to the people who need it."

The WHO defines diarrhea as the passage of three or more loose or liquid stools per day, normally a symptom of gastrointestinal infection which can be caused by bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms.

World

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Simple recipe can prevent child diarrhea deaths

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