As you can imagine, convincing attendees of PATH's recent “PATH After Hours” donor event to sample oral rehydration solution (ORS) alongside their wine and appetizers was somewhat of a difficult sell. Most attendees politely declined my offer to take a swig of briny water as they approached my display table depicting PATH's diarrheal disease control efforts.

But convincing them of the gravity of diarrheal disease globally was not difficult. Most found it impossible to politely ignore that today children still die from diarrhea--much less 1.3 million of them every year. Maybe attendees didn't feel like dampening their pallets with some salty water (and who can blame them, really?), but they clung to my words depicting the devastation of diarrheal disease and nodded their heads vigorously to my descriptions of PATH's multi-pronged approach to combating this disease.
 

“So what's your spiel at this table”?

Basically, that diarrheal disease is the second leading killer of children under 5 worldwide, that it is the most common cause of child death in Africa; that while every child in the world is at risk for diarrheal disease and most experience it in their early years, it disproportionately takes the lives of developing-country children simply by dehydration.
 

“That's horrible! What is PATH doing to stop this”?

Where resources are limited, diarrheal disease is difficult to control due to its multifaceted causes and influencers. PATH is combating diarrheal disease with a coordinated approach from multiple angles from water and sanitation, to vaccine development, to advocacy. Another one of those angles is encouraging use of ORS, which has been available for decades, as an ideal public health intervention. ORS is a very simple mixture of salts and sugars, extremely low-cost, easily administered by untrained individuals, and nearly 100% effective at reversing deadly dehydration.
 

“If ORS has been available for so long and is such an ideal intervention, why is its use low?”

The public health sector has developed many hypotheses for the lower-than-desired use of ORS, and PATH is further pursuing a couple of the promising solutions. By pursuing multiple methods to increase use of ORS, PATH hopes to significantly reduce deaths by dehydration globally. Some of PATH's projects are focusing on:

·         Producing ORS in the form of a tablet instead of a dry mixture under the idea that ORS would possibly be used more frequently if it looked more like a medicine than a water additive.

·         Researching user preferences for product attributes like color, taste, and packaging to determine if country-specific product variations would increase use .

·         Testing a new formulation of ORS that contains a starch additive to treat diarrheal symptoms under the idea that if ORS visibly reduces diarrhea, caregivers will be more likely to administer it as a treatment.
 

“What can I do to help?”

Keep the conversation open. Diarrhea is not thought of as a very polite topic of conversation, especially over a glass of wine and a plate of appetizers. But, the million-plus deaths per year are reason enough to keep talking about it. Join PATH's conversation at www.defeatdd.org.

-- Anna Larsen in a Program Assistant for Technology Solutions at PATH

For more information:

-- Fact sheet: ORS Re-formulated: A new addition to an old solution

-- Zinc and ORS: Ready for take off in Cambodia

-- News: The British Medical Journal touts zinc and ORS as one of the best investments to achieve MDG 4.