'Use
Of ORS' In Diarrhoea
Needs A Push
By Anil Gulati
30 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Sharda,
a three year old girl lost her life just few days back in a village
in Sehore, about 40 kilometers away from Bhopal, capital city of the
state of Madhya Pradesh. She was suffering with acute diarrhoea, and
died of dehydration. She is not the only an isolated case, thousands
of children die due to dehydration in diarrhoea in Madhya Pradesh and
may be millions in India. Bhopal recently lost four lives due to cholera.
Oral Rehydration salt solution can save many like Sharda. Every year
on July 29 we observe ORS Day with aim to promote the use of Oral Rehydration
salt and to educate the people about its use.
Oral Rehydration Salt is
a dry mixture of powder containing Sodium Chloride, Trisodium Citrate
dehydrate, Potassium Chloride and anhydrous glucose. It is used for
prevention and treatment of dehydration due to diarrhoea including maintenance
therapy. Acute diarrhoeal diseases are among the leading causes of mortality
in infants and young children in India. In most cases, death is caused
by dehydration. Dehydration from diarrhoea can be prevented by giving
extra fluids at home, or it can be treated simply, effectively, and
cheaply in all age-groups and in all but the most severe cases by giving
patients by mouth an adequate glucose-electrolyte solution called Oral
Rehydration Salts (ORS) solution. Oral Rehydration Therapy was first
researched in the 1940s but it was twenty years later before the idea
was developed by research institutions in Bangladesh and India for the
management of severe cholera. It was adopted in 1978 as primary tool
to fight diarrhoea and since then has saved million of deaths of children,
but still there is grave need to promotes its use and enhance its access.
National family Health Survey
III reveals that in the developing State like Madhya Pradesh only 28.6
% children with diarrhoea in last two weeks had received the ORS. Madhya
Pradesh has the highest infant mortality rate in India. 76 children
die out of the thousand born within the first year of their life; diarrhoea
is one of the contributors to the same. State also has high incidence
of malnutrition among children especially under three years of age,
when malnourished child suffers with diarrhoea it aggravates the situation
and increase chances of his or her mortality.
It is an indicatio that there
is an urgent need to expand awareness among communities on its importance,
its use and enhance its accessibility for communities. Though officially
State has many stocking points of ORS like Anganwadi centre's, sub health
centre's and primary health care centre's but more important is its
accessibility at time when it is needed and knowledge its right usage
by the communities and parents of the children when they need the most.
Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Madhya Pradesh's
medium term strategy document states that diarrhoeal disease episodes
per year is 760 per one lakh population and it projects that by year
2015 it will increase to 880 episodes per lakh.
This means that we not only
need to expand usage of this inexpensive and readily available intervention
in the state which can help reduce death and suffering from dehydration
caused by diarrhoea. It will also help to reduce number of days of hospitalization,
length of treatment and costly intravenous treatment. The tragedy is
that inspite of the medical fraternity and many of us working in social
sector know about its advantage as life saviour for children. Experience,
research has validated the same and it was hailed by the prestigious
British Journal, the Lancet as "…potentially the most important
medical advance of the century…" children still die for want
of this simple intervention. May be we need to go beyond our present
efforts and need to rework out strategies and bridge the existing gap
between information and knowledge and action by communities at ground
or else we will continue to let children die…
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