Dilip Mahalanabis’s miracle cure, ORS

Dilip Mahalanabis’s miracle cure, ORS

Subject :Science

Context-

• Dilip Mahalanabis, known for  oral rehydration therapy (ORT) passed away on October, 16, 2022.

About him-

• Dilip Mahalanabis (12 November 1934 – 16 October 2022) was an Indian paediatrician known for pioneering the use of oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrheal diseases.
• In the mid-1960s he did research on cholera and other diarrheal diseases at the Johns Hopkins International Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta, India.
• In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, he was a medical officer in the Diarrheal Disease Control Programme of the WHO.
• Later in the 1990s, he served as the Director of Clinical Research at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B), Bangladesh.
• In 1994,Mahalanabis was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• In 2002 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Nathaniel Pierce, Dr. David Nalin and Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn, were awarded the first Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research for their contributions to the discovery and implementation of oral rehydration therapy.
• In 2006 Dr. Mahalanabis, Dr. Richard A. Cash and Dr. David Nalin were awarded the Prince Mahidol Prize, also for their role in the development and application of oral rehydration therapy.

His contribution-

• In 1971, as the Bangladesh Liberation War in the refugee camp in Bangaon, West Bengal, Cholera was spread taking the toll on life. The camp was under the supervision of Kolkata paediatrician DilipMahalanabis, andthe situation was turning critical.
• The camp was running out of intravenous fluid saline, the then-standard treatment for the severe — frequently fatal — diarrhoea that cholera causes, and lacked enough trained staff to administer it.
• In desperation, Mahalanabis turned to oral rehydration therapy (ORT), still not widely accepted as a diarrhoea treatment, and with the support of the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Medical Research and Training in Kolkata, began administering a precise mixture of table salt, baking soda and commercial glucose with clean drinking water.
• The results were near-miraculous: Within two weeks, the death rate dropped from 30 per cent to 3.6 per cent.

About ORT-

• Oral rehydration therapy is an alternative to intravenous rehydration therapy for preventing and treating dehydration from diarrhea when intravenous therapy is not available or feasible. Oral rehydration therapy is calculated by the World Health Organization to have saved the lives of over 60 million persons.

Inspiring contribution to the medical world-

The story of ORT spans many years and involves several important figures, from Yale paediatrician Daniel Darrow who concluded in the 1940s that an oral solution of potassium, lactate and glucose could help restore electrolytes lost due to diarrhoea to physician Robert A Phillips, whose work during a cholera epidemic in the Philippines demonstrated the viability of oral therapy, which had long been dismissed as being too simple to be effective.