• Renowned paediatrician Dr. Dilip Mahalanabis, credited with pioneering the oral rehydration therapy, passed away. He was 87.

• Mahalanabis started his work on oral rehydration therapy in 1966 as a research investigator for Johns Hopkins University International Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta.

• He had hit the headlines during the Liberation War in Bangladesh in 1971, when the doctor saved thousands of lives with the oral rehydration solution (ORS) during an outbreak of cholera, while serving in a refugee camp at Bangaon in West Bengal.  

• Therapy with ORS in 1971 reduced cholera death rates from 50 per cent to 3 per cent among thousands of refugees. ORS has since saved the lives of millions of children around the world.

• He was a co-recipient of the Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research (2002) and the Prince Mahidol Award from the government of Thailand in 2006.

• He was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1994.

Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) 

• Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is a form of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) for diarrhoea that has the potential to drastically reduce child mortality.

• This intervention is especially suitable in locations where intravenous (IV) fluids are scarce or unavailable, and replaces indiscriminate and unnecessary use of antibiotics to treat diarrhoea.

• The solution is a mixture of clean water, sugar and salt, which helps children recover and retain vital fluids and nutrients. The solution replaces the essential fluids and electrolytes lost by patients stricken with severely dehydrating, potentially fatal diarrhea.

• Bangladesh came under the grip of cholera during the Liberation War there in 1971. Mahalanabis was then serving as a doctor in a refugee camp at the Indo-Bangladesh border area at Bangaon in West Bengal. To protect the people at the camp from cholera and diarrhoea, he prepared an oral solution mixing salt and sugar in water. This solution worked as a miracle in preventing these two fatal diseases and the solution later became famous as ORS.

• Since then, WHO, UNICEF, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have promoted ORS as an essential medicine to treat diarrhoea, the third leading cause of death in children younger than 5 years of age worldwide.

• It was hailed as one of the most important medical discoveries of the 20th century.

• In the 1980s, in response to low ORS coverage (ie, the proportion of children with diarrhoea who received ORS), WHO promoted the use of so-called recommended home fluids (RHF) in addition to ORS, and oral rehydration therapy (ORT) became the phrase used to refer to treatment with ORS or RHF.

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