Diarrhea and Dehydration
...The Grim Reaper of Children
Diarrhea and Dehydration One of the major causes of dehydration in the world is diarrhea. This particular cause results in a high infant mortality rate, particularly in the Third World. Let's look at the dimensions of this problem and explain a very simple way of reducing the death rate from diarrhea. Many are not aware of the remedy and continue experiencing a high death rate.
A Serious Problem
Did you know that diarrhea and dehydration resulting from it kills more children under five than malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis combined? It is actually the second leading cause of death in children under five in the world and responsible for 1.9 million deaths a year. Second only to pneumonia which kills 2 million a year. Death through diarrhea represents 17% of deaths among children under five out of a total of 11 million deaths annually in this age category.What is so tragic about this is that most of these deaths are preventable! High profile diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria have attracted most of the interest and money of governments and donors due to the mistaken belief that they kill the vast majority of children under five. Most cases of diarrhea can be traced to either food or water which carry more or less 100 different kinds of diarrhea causing germs. In Ethiopia, the average child under five suffers from five to twelve episodes of diarrhea a year! No wonder the infant mortality rate is so high.
A Simple Solution
In 1971 cholera broke out among refugees from Bangladesh who had poured into India. An Indian doctor, Dilip Mahalanabis, ran out of IV saline solution. He had participated in an oral re-hydration experiment at Johns Hopkins Center in Calcutta and decided to use it even though it hadn't been adequately tested. The rate of death among cholera patients fell from 30% to 3%! Here's the oral re-hydration recipe: Put one large pinch of salt and a fistful of sugar into a jug of water and there you are, you have a very effective re-hydration drink! To be more precise, it's 1 teaspoon of salt and 8 teaspoons of sugar mixed into 1 liter (5 cups) of clean drinking water. The sugar makes it possible for the salt to be absorbed more efficiently which in turn increases the absorption rate of the water. By 1978 the World Health Organization launched a diarrheal-diseases control program and by 1980 the number of diarrhea deaths in the world per year was cut from 5 million to 3 million. However, far too many are still dying from preventable diarrhea and dehydration diseases. In Africa the fight against diarrhea is complicated by the lack of pure water and an infrastructure for educating and executing programs of re-hydration for diarrhea. It's estimated that in spite of progress made from 1990 to 2004, there are still 1.1 billion people who don't have access to clean drinking water in the world.
How You Can Use This Information
Depending on your place of living and the people you know, you can help educate those who do experience frequent bouts of diarrhea and dehydration. Even in America, children can experience severe diarrhea and would benefit from your knowledge of this oral re-hydration drink. There are others of you who work out intensely for long periods of time, maybe running in a marathon for example, who can become severely dehydrated. This information could serve you personally well. You may wish to read further on my site on a subject related to diarrhea and dehydration. There are many milder degrees of dehydration. If you understand more clearly why the body experiences dehydration, how to recognize its symptoms and how to re-hydrate under less critical conditions than those we've been describing here, you will be able to maintain a higher energy level and a clearer mind.
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