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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...been the main treatment--in many places the only one--since the early 1970s, when U.N. officials first distributed sachets of sugar and salt to refugees in South Asia in an attempt to reduce cholera deaths. Today, rehydration salts mixed with clean water are given to millions of poor people across Africa and Asia. It works: the glucose in the water slows the exit of fluids from the body, allowing electrolytes to be absorbed through the intestinal walls and thus halting potentially deadly dehydration...
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...
...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 whose death rates have plummeted in recent years...
When the rescued dogs arrived, the warehouse became a riot of barking, growling, whimpering - and the first loving human tones the animals had ever experienced. The population soon swelled as pregnant females delivered more than 100 puppies. The exact location of this St. Louis - area haven remained a well-guarded secret, however, because some of those puppies and dogs can be worth more than $5,000 each on the black market. (See a video of the rescued pit bulls...
...this sounds like a dog lover's more-the-merrier fantasy - 101 Dalmatians times five - think again. The rehabilitation of even one fighting dog is a long and uncertain project. First comes the medical care. Beyond their obvious wounds and infections, some of the dogs arrive with broken ribs and internal injuries - from being kicked. After the physical exams comes a psychological evaluation. Experienced animal handlers gauge the dog's mental condition: How aggressive is it? How traumatized? How far gone? This screening is a final life-or-death ordeal for a dog, because a fighter that cannot be tamed...