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New formula for Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) will further decrease number of
deaths and severity of illness due to Diarrhoea
Press Note
The new formulation for
Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS), being released today
by the Government of India, will save lakhs of
children under five years of age in India and further reduce the morbidity
and mortality due to acute diarrhoea. Oral Rehydration Salts, when dissolve in water, are a sodium
and glucose solution that is widely used to treat children with acute diarrhoea, a serious killer of children under five
worldwide. The new ORS has a lower concentration of sodium and glucose and
hence, a lower total osmolarity of 245mosm/l
compared to the currently available ORS which has an osmolarity
of 311mosm/l. The new formula ORS promises to reduce the severity of diarrhoea and vomiting, the number of hospitalizations, the
need for costly intravenous fluid treatment and the length of illness.
Diarrhoea has been the single largest killer of children
under five in India till two decades ago. Following the adoption of ORS by WHO 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. Government of India
launched serious efforts to curtail this disease and in 1985 the National Diarrhoeal Disease Control Programme
was launched. Since then, rapid strides have been taken in the reduction of
deaths due to diarrhoea in children. ORS is simple,
easily available, effective and inexpensive remedy for control and treatment
of dehydration due to diarrhoea. Further, efforts
to improve and formulate a new ORS have been continuously researched by the
World Health Organization (WHO), with support from US Agency for
International Development (USAID). The latest study was conducted in five
developing countries among children from one month to two years old with
acute diarrhoea and dehydration. The study findings
suggest that using the low sodium, low glucose ORS formulation reduces the
need for intravenous fluids by 33 percent. The effect of this reduction could
result in fewer children requiring hospitalization, fewer secondary
infections and lower health care costs.
To reach the 2010 goal of
reduction of infant mortality to 30 per 1000 live births we need to expand
the use of ORS dramatically. In order to do so, Government of India under its
Reproductive and Child Health Programme especially
emphasizes upon improving child survival activities including enhancing the
ORS use rate through appropriate Behavioral change Communication and making
new ORS widely and easily available at home, communities and health centres/facilities. Rapid and easy access to ORS and
knowledge about its use are crucial to the reduction of deaths and severity
due to diarrhoea.
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