You probably know that Diarrhoea is a major killer, taking countless lives every year through dehydration and fluid loss. WHO estimate 2.6 million people die every year. Poor sanitation is the primary cause and although WHO are making inroads into sanitation improvement across the globe, it’s an uphill struggle. With the noble goal of 100% clean water probably never realisable across the entire planet, you might think all those deaths are tragically unavoidable. Not so, as the cure for diarrhoea couldn’t be simpler namely, oral rehydration salts (ORS), which are simply a mixture of salt, clean water and sugar. So why the deaths with such a simple cure? No access to clean water, salt or sugar? Nope, even in remote areas with poor sanitation most people can access clean water (either bottled or boiled), salt and sugar even if it’s only in emergency quantities to rehydrate an ill person.

Most of the deaths are due to people not being able to keep ORS solutions down. They simply vomit them back up often leaving them in a more weakened state. The trick is to apply ORS is in quantities the body can’t reject. In the west that means a hospital drip. So what do you do in a country without drips or where hospital access is too difficult? Well, apparently you give a teaspoon and a few litre bottles of sugar, salt and water to someone, sit them down by the ill person and every 5 minutes they give 1 teaspoon of it to them for a period of at least 24 hours or until they shows signs of recovery. Believe it or not, you can even use flat coke or some other flat, fizzy drink mixed with salt to the same effect. And trust me, even in the planet’s most god forsaken holes, of which I’ve been to a few, you will find someone selling family size bottles of coke. They use this method in Bangladesh with a 100% success rate yet it’s apparently not known in a lot of other countries. Crazy,eh? 2.6 million deaths every year, most if not all of which could be prevented without a visit to a hospital, just by communicating the right information to people.

And it doesn’t stop there. Cholera affects 3-5 million people every year. I thought Cholera was some untreatable, terminal disease. In fact it’s diarrhoea, though a much more aggressive form of it. The cure? Just the same. A teaspoon, some simple ORS and a bit of patience.

There are some incredible examples of donor aid in action (and some excruciatingly cack handed, numbnut examples, but that’s another story).  Polio practically eradicated from the globe, clean water programs in the most inaccessible of places. The empowerment of millions of some of the poorest women to start up small businesses. How difficult can it be to educate people with a simple 1, 2, 3 set of instructions on dealing with diarrhoea? Answers on a postcard to WHO please.

And now a photo to cheer you up

These were a group of school kids on an outing to the beach who just couldn’t get enough of Nadine’s hair. There were two or three dozen of them buzzing around her as we walked along the beach. I, on the other hand, was given short shrift. I put on my best smile, gave the head a polish and presented it at an inviting angle. Not a pat. I even did the old tongue in the ear trick to drum up some interest. Nothing, not a smile. Not even a, ‘nice trick mate but we’ve seen it before’.  All I managed was to get a couple of them to cry (I need to remember to brush my tongue more often). Though I think my real mistake was in trying to compete with the blokes below who were there putting on a tumble and gymnastics show.

I did not see a single one of them do the tongue in the ear trick. Not one.