Reading on diarrhoea : Student manual

Diarrhoea is a leading cause of illness and death in developing countries, where an estimated 1.3 thousand million episodes and 3.2 million deaths occur annually in children under 5 years of age. Many of these children die from dehydration;dysentery and malnutrition are also important causes of death. Diarrhoea diseases also represents an economic burden for these countries, since children with diarrhoea are often admitted to hospital and treated with expensive intravenous fluids and ineffective drugs. Fortunately, however, simple and effective treatment measures are available that can markedly reduce that number of deaths caused by diarrhoea, make admission to hospital unnecessary in most cases, and prevent the adverse effect of diarrhoea on nutritional status. Practical preventive measures can also be taken that substantially reduce the incidence and severity of diarrhoeal episodes. This book describes these measures and provides essential information on topics such as the epidemiology and etiology of diarrhoea and the treatment of patients with dehydration, malnutrition or serious infections. A number of preventive measures are identified as targets for promotion, Annexed to the manual are guidelines for determining whether a child is malnourished, and for administering intravenous and nasogastric rehydration therapy, together with a list of antimicrobial agents for the treatment of specific causes of diarrhoea.