Impressive Health Gains through: 1/2 Liter of Water, 1 Pinch of Salt & a Fistful of Sugar

Lester Brown wrote about BRAC’s pioneering campaign to reduce infant and child deaths from diarrhea on the Earth Policy Institute’s sustainablog and on OpEdNews.com. The blog entry focuses on the critical role that ensuring basic health care for people in low-income countries plays in eradicating poverty and stabilizing populations.

“One of the most impressive health gains has come from a campaign initiated by a little-heralded nongovernmental group in Bangladesh, BRAC, that taught every mother in the country how to prepare oral rehydration solution to treat diarrhea at home by simply adding salt and sugar to water. BRAC succeeded in dramatically reducing infant and child deaths from diarrhea in a country that was densely populated, poverty-stricken, and poorly educated.
Seeing this great success, UNICEF used BRAC’s model for its worldwide diarrheal disease treatment program. This global administration of a remarkably simple oral rehydration technique has been extremely effective-reducing deaths from diarrhea among children from 4.6 million in 1980 to 1.6 million in 2006. Few investments have saved so many lives at such a low cost.”

To learn more: Watch the following video narrated by Brad Pitt which was created for the PBS series RX for Survival. You can also pre-order Freedom From Want, by Ian Smillie, and read chapter 9, "A Simple Solution" to learn how BRAC took this campaign to scale.



When I was in Bangladesh this past August, I asked the members of one of BRAC's adolescent development clubs for girls if they knew how to prepare oral rehydration solution. 80% of these girls aged 11-21 knew the recipe and the majority said that they had occasion to use it.