Diarrhoeal disease control: Reviews of potential interventions

Diarrhoeal diseases are a major cause of sickness and death among young children in most developing countries. Since effective interventions to control these diseases are available, they are a priority target for the primary health care programmes being planned or implemented in many countries. Governments and international agencies, including the World Health Organization, have emphasized oral rehydration as an effective intervention for reducing diarrhoeal disease mortality. Other interventions are, however, needed to reduce morbidity, to reduce mortality not averted by oral rehydration, and to develop a multifaceted approach in which oral rehydration is one of several anti-diarrhoea measures being implemented simultaneously with mutally reinforcing and complementary impacts. This paper presents a classification of potential interventions for the control of diarrhoeal disease morbidity and/or mortality among children under 5 years of age and introduces a series of reviews of these interventions. The first of these reviews, on measles immunization, also appears in this issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.