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Scientists first hit on zinc's effectiveness in the early 1990s, when researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore gave children in New Delhi a daily dose of syrup containing 20 mg of zinc. The rate of diarrhea dropped dramatically. Because ORT had already proved effective in the fight against diarrhea, though, aid organizations and researchers shifted their focus elsewhere--particularly to the disastrous spread of AIDS. The delay, the WHO's Fontaine says, cost the effort "at least 10 years...
...experts say the huge disparity comes because most diarrhea victims are poor children--invisible to politicians--and because diarrhea itself makes people squeamish. As Time pointed out in an international cover story three years ago, celebrities don't hold concerts for diarrhea. "Compared with malaria and AIDS, we are totally underfunded," says Fontaine. "This is truly a neglected disease...
...officials like Fontaine hope that zinc becomes so standard that it will be "like having Band-Aids at home." A second medical breakthrough should also help. At least one-third of all diarrhea deaths among young children are caused by the rotavirus, which infects the cells lining the small intestine and causes gastroenteritis. In June the WHO approved the first rotavirus vaccine for global use. The vaccine, which in trials in Latin America, Europe and the U.S. cut rotavirus infections 85%, could someday be part of routine vaccination programs for children, along with those for polio, measles and other diseases...
There are still hurdles. In Mali, where more than 20% of children never see their fifth birthday, the government has finally added zinc to its annual list of 100 essential drugs, clearing the way for much wider distribution of the tablets. But only a few villages have received zinc tablets so far--and those have all come through the Save the Children U.S. program, whose funding expires next year, according to Tom McCormack, the organization's representative in Mali. Even though it has virtually no money to train health workers, Mali's government remains deeply reluctant to allow uneducated villagers...
...village of some 500 people nestled among mango trees near the Guinea border, locals say diarrhea deaths have fallen sharply since zinc tablets were distributed last year. When I visited in May, the village chief gathered five women to talk about their lives. The group had lost seven children among them, four to diarrhea. Kinza Diallo, 29, said that when her 1-year-old daughter contracted diarrhea in 2004, she clutched her on the back of a motorbike for the hour's ride to the nearest hospital, where she was given pills and sent away. The girl died two days...