PEDIATRICS Vol. 67 No. 6 June 1981, pp. 920-921
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The Bowel Cocktail

M. D. Bowie MD, FRCP1, M. D. Mann MMED, PhD1, and I. D. Hill MB, FCP (SA)1

1 Department of Paediatrics and Child Health Institute of Child Health University of Cape Town and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital Cape Town, Republic of South Africa

Infantile gastroenteritis or infectious diarrhea of infancy remains a serious pediatric problem worldwide. It has been estimated that during 1975 500 million episodes of diarrhea occurred among the babies and young children of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, killing between 5 million and 18 million of them.1 Only improvements in the socioeconomic conditions, housing, education, and nutritional status of these communities will result in diarrheal disease receding from its present position as the major cause of death of infants and young children. In the interim an attempt must be made to reduce the high mortality which is due firstly, in the acute phase, to water and electrolyte loss and secondly, in the later stages, to the diarrhea leading to further debility, malnutrition, and the well-known vicious cycle of undernutrition and gastroenteritis.