Word: zinc
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...Real" Treatment Exactly how zinc stops diarrhea is not entirely clear. Olivier Fontaine, a diarrhea specialist for the WHO, believes that since the mineral is an essential ingredient in about 300 enzymes, boosting zinc levels strengthens the body's immunity, thus preventing diarrhea from turning deadly. A single course apparently also staves off further bouts of diarrhea for about three months - long enough to see a community through the deadly rainy seasons. Contrast that with ORT, which is extremely effective in replacing fluids and nutrients but offers no quick end to the diarrhea itself. ORT has another drawback: crucially...
...intense frustration of aid groups and government officials, only about 35% of families in diarrhea-stricken countries use ORT - less than half the WHO's target. Until zinc arrived in Sogola, only about one in 10 village residents used the sachets when they or their children became ill. That number has soared since Traoré added zinc tablets to the prescription. "Mothers don't see ORT as real treatment," says Eric Swedberg, senior director of child health and nutrition at Save the Children U.S. in Westport, Conn. "But when you add the zinc you really see the effects. This...
...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, Md., gave children in New Delhi a daily dose of syrup containing 20 mg of zinc. The rate of diarrhea dropped dramatically. "Nobody believed the results," Fontaine says. "No one had an explanation why zinc worked." 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...
...Hope Zinc could change that. Earlier this year, pilot zinc-treatment programs began in parts of Ethiopia and Tanzania, and several African governments are now looking at zinc programs. The treatment is already stirring interest among rich-country donors and drug companies: about 20 firms in countries from France to India have begun manufacturing zinc tablets during the past few years. "The private sector was never really interested in ORT," Fontaine says. "But zinc has totally taken off. It looks like real medicine and is not given out for free." (See pictures of Ethiopia's harvest of hunger...
...officials such as 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 by 85%, could someday be part of routine vaccination programs for children, along with those for polio, measles...