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News/Event Item
A Simple Solution
Oct 8, 2006,
by Andrea Gerlin
Most of the tiny patients confined to the children's ward at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, are weak, malnourished and dehydrated. They've suffered attack after attack of diarrhea and, in some cases, are clinging to life.
Five-month-old Sohag, who is lying on green plastic sheeting in a bed four times her size, had suffered diarrhea for seven days before she was admitted. Her weight had dropped to 2.75 kg, just over one-third of that expected for her age, and she now seems to be little more than a distended stomach, bulging head and collection of scrawny limbs.
According to the chart at the foot of her bed, she may also have pneumonia and sepsis. But at the root of her problem is chronic diarrhea, a daily killer of 5,000 young children in the developing world and the cause of one-third of child deaths in Bangladesh. Her 15-year-old mother, Jharana, had never heard of diarrhea before she was advised to take Sohag to ICDDR's hospital. There, the baby received saline solution through a vein in her arm, and a rice-based solution through a tube in her nose.
Copyright 2006 Time Europe
For the Full Article, visit
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901061016-1543876,00.html
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Olga Zhuykova on 13 October 2006
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