The Hindu : New Delhi News : Guidelines on diarrhoea management

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 21, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Guidelines on diarrhoea management

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JAN. 20. In an effort to reduce the incidence of diarrhoea deaths, the country's top 13 paediatricians have got together to bring out the first national guidelines on management of diarrhoea titled "Current Concepts in the Management of Diarrhoea".

Prepared after an year's deliberations, the guidelines break three major myths about paediatric diarrhoea, besides talking about the vaccines against diarrhoea, probiotics in diarrhoea, HIV and diarrhoea, micronutrients in diarrhoea, intractable or protracted diarrhoea of infancy, nutrition in diarrhoea and paediatric nutrition.

Speaking about the most common mistakes that parents commit when their child has diarrhoea, the Head of Paediatrics at Max Hospital in Pitampura, S.K. Mittal, said: "Non-use of the ORS solution and in some cases inadequate use, doctors not prescribing the solution are common place. Also, the myth that children should not be fed when they have diarrhoea is completely false. In fact, children should be fed and drugs which are rampantly used need to be given only when blood and mucous is noticed in the stool."

All this and more are part of the guidelines that have been put together by physicians from across the country including -- Y.C. Mathur (Hyderabad), Sheila Bhave (Pune), Ramesh Kancharla (Hyderabad), Dilip Mukherjee (Kolkata), A.Parthasarathy (Chennai), Nitin K. Shah (Mumbai), K.E.Elizabeth (Thiruvananthapuram), Rajiv. C. Mathur (Hyderabad), Malathi Sathiyasekaran (Chennai) and B.R. Thapan (Chandigarh).

""India needs to develop its own national guidelines on management of different diseases. Invariably we follow either the American or the British guidelines that may not be totally apt for the Indian population. It is thus extremely essential for Indian experts to develop national recommendations and guidelines based on our own ethnic, genetic and geographical variations and dispositions," said the National President (elect) of Indian Medical Association (IMA) Sanjiv Malik.

The guidelines are second in the series published, the first one on minimal access surgery was released in July 2002. The publication of the diarrhoea guidelines has been supported by an educational grant from India's pharma major Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited and the guidelines would be distributed free of cost to all paediatricians across the country.

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