ORT now helps save more than 1 million children's lives each year 

Diarrhoeal diseases are very common among young children and are a leading child killer in developing countries. About 2.2 million children die from dehydration due to diarrhoeal diseases, 80% of them in the first two years of life.

Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT), a simple, cost-effective treatment given at home using either packets of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) costing about 10 cents each or a simple home solution of sugar, salt and water can prevent about 90% of child deaths from diarrhoeal dehydration. UNICEF and its partners have helped more than 45 countries to achieve treating 80% of child diarrhoea cases with ORT.

ORT now helps save more than 1 million children's lives each year, indicating substantial progress towards the year 2000 goal of halving the child death rate from diarrhoeal diseases during this decade.

This simple method can break the back of the world's leading killer of children.

The first breakthrough is the discovery of Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT). It's importance is that it can stop the dehydration — caused by the draining of the child's body as a result of diarrhoeal infection — which now kills an estimated 2.2 million young children a year and is by far the biggest single cause of death among the developing world's children.

Previously it could only be treated by qualified nurses or doctors using expensive intravenous feeding in an often inaccessible hospital. With the discovery of ORT, it can be treated by a mother giving her child the right mix of sugar, salt and water in her own home.

The need for ORT is clear. The technology is known. The means of dissemination are available. The receptiveness of parents has been demonstrated. The cost is small. 

Again what is required is the global will to make this breakthrough available to the millions of children who so desperately require if. 

Diarrhoea is the passage of watery stools. This means body fluids and salts can be quickly lost from the body. The child becomes dry (dehydrated) and this is very dangerous and may kill the child.

Diarrhoea is caused by bacteria or viruses. The key factors are unclean water, dirty hands at mealtime and spoilt food. Children who are malnourished suffer much more; in turn, diarrhoea weakens children and makes them more malnourished. There is always some degree of dehydration, and, most often, the draining of too much fluid from the body is the cause of death.

Diarrhoea can be prevented through exclusive breastfeeding, improved weaning practices, measles immunization, use of latrines, washing hands (the baby's as well), keeping water and food clean, washing with soap before touching food and by sanitary disposal of stools. 

Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) is the process of replacing essential body fluids and salts that a child loses in critical quantities during attacks of diarrhoea. The treatment consists of common salt and sugar mixed in one liter of clean drinking water given to the child by mouth. 

By replacing lost body fluids, ORT prevents dehydration and nurses the child back to health. 

ORT is best administered with the use of a pre-packed formula called Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) available in a sachet to make a liter of solution.

"The discovery of oral rehydration therapy is as important as the discovery of penicillin."
Professor Mamdouh Gabr - Cairo University, Faulty of Medicine

"We believe that, ultimately, widespread adoption of ORT in developing countries will break the vicious cycle of diarrhoea, malnutrition, and death - especially for the principal victims : very young children."
Dr. W B Greennough, Director, International Centre of Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

"ORT can rightly be called the medical miracle of this century .... For peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin American, ORT holds the promise of healthier childhoods and more productive adult lives."
Shamsul Hag. Minister for Health and Population Control, Government of Bangladesh.

"Today the high success rate and low cost of ORT makes it the preferred treatment for mildly or moderately dehydrated children. According to current American Academy of Pediatrics practice guidelines, ORT is as effective as IV therapy for treatment of mild to moderate dehydration."
Mayo Clinic

"A significant development in recent years has been the demonstration that dehydration from diarrhoea of any etiology can be treated using a simple glucose-electrolyte solution given by mouth."
Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics - 12th Edition 1983

"Nearly 90% of mortality from diarrhoea is due to fluid loss. Accurate and timely replacement of that loss is lifesaving."
Dr. Norbert Hirschlorn - Nutrition Reviews Volume 40, page 87, 1982

Dehydration caused by diarrhoea is the biggest single killer of children in the modern world and diarrhoea itself is one of the major causes of nutritional loss and poor growth.

Now, dehydration can be prevented and nutritional losses minimized by a revolutionary new technique called Oral Rehydration therapy (ORT). To prevent dehydration, oral rehydration salts can be made at home from ordinary household ingredients.

To prevent - or treat - dehydration, sachets of the salts made up to precise WHO/UNICEF formula now cost only a few cents each. But the problem is how to make them available to millions of parents through out the world.