Word: zinc
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...quiet revolution is under way. Over the past few years, a handful of aid organizations and governments - including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development - have begun distributing zinc supplements to villagers in Bangladesh, India, Mali and Pakistan. Several other groups are working with governments in Africa to introduce zinc, which comes both in tablet form and as a syrup. In Mali, Save the Children U.S. used $680,000 from a 2007 charity concert of American Idol to distribute zinc tablets to a handful of villages in the south of the country. (Read TIME...
...small programs have drawn little attention. But their impact has been dramatic. Zinc pills appear to halt diarrhea in its tracks. "Before, we were terrified when children's stomachs began running, because we knew some of them would die," says Sata Djialla in the Malian village of Morola. "Now our children are not dying of diarrhea...
...closest thing the town has to a pharmacy. There Moussa Traoré, 48, a thin, wan man who's one of two residents entrusted with the closet key, dispenses drugs with a studied seriousness. Since last year he has prescribed children suffering from diarrhea with 20 mg of zinc daily for about two weeks. Throw in oral-rehydration therapy (ORT), which has been the main weapon against diarrhea for the past few decades, and a treatment costs less than $0.30 - affordable even to Sogola's desperately poor families...
...Traoré shows me a weathered school exercise book, in which he lists deaths. There are several diarrhea deaths for previous years - but none in 2008 or 2009. "Since zinc arrived we have had no deaths from diarrhea," Traoré says. Cradling her 10-month-old son outside, Maimouna Bakayogo, 32, says she panicked when her baby developed stomach pains, diarrhea and fever. "I was really afraid," she says. "Then I remembered Moussa saying there was zinc in the village. I went to get some from him, and within one day I saw a big difference. The baby looked much...
...Read: "Healing: The Unexpected Properties of Zinc...