New rehydration formula to save millions of lives

The World Health Organization, released on Wednesday a new improved formula of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) that would save millions of lives and reduce the severity of illness of those suffering from acute diarrhoea, WHO reported. ORS is a sodium and glucose solution used to treat children with acute diarrhoea. WHO said the new formula will reduce the severity of diarrhoea and vomiting, the number of hospitalisations, the need for costly intravenous fluid treatment and the length of illness. "The use of ORS is responsible for saving the lives of millions of children worldwide. This inexpensive and readily available intervention reduces death and suffering from dehydration caused by diarrhoea. Since WHO adopted ORS in 1978 as its primary tool to fight diarrhoea, the mortality rate for children suffering from acute diarrhoea has fallen from 5 million to 1.3 million deaths annually," the UN health body added. The new formula resulted from extensive research sponsored by WHO's Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development, with support from the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID). Research was conducted among children from one month to two years old with acute diarrhoea and dehydration in several countries. "ORS is one of the great public health success stories of our time," Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of WHO said. "Reducing childhood deaths from diarrhoea by half in ten years is a notable success, but, diarrhoea remains a major cause of death. This week at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children, governments will endorse a new goal to reduce deaths from diarrhoea by a further 50 percent by 2010." Use of the new ORS formula would begin later this year in India, WHO said.