Every year 3 million children succumb to diarrhoeal disease.
Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is a low-cost life-saving method of preventing and treating the dehydration caused by diarrhoeal disease. More than one decade ago, ORT was was hardly known, but today it is being used by almost 40 percent of all families in the developing world and saving about 1 million lives each year. As of 1994, forty nations, 16 of them in Africa, have lifted ORT use rates by 30 percent or more over the last seven years.