Misconception drives under-prescription of ORS

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Health

Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS)

It involves drinking water with modest amounts of sugar and salts, specifically sodium and potassium.
It is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. Globally oral rehydration therapy is used by approx. 41% of children with diarrhoea.
Its use has played an important role in reducing the number of deaths in children under the age of five.
Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is a type of fluid replacement used to prevent and treat
dehydration, especially due to diarrhea, decreases the risk of death from diarrhea by up to 93%.

What is misconception here:

Healthcare providers assume that patients do not want ORS and this led to under-prescription.
Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) are a lifesaving and inexpensive treatment for diarrhoea in children, but few prescribe it in developing countries especially.
However, presently, nearly half of diarrhoeal cases around the world do not receive ORS, according to researchers.
As per a randomised controlled trial to simultaneously study the role of three leading explanations for under-prescribing of ORS are as :

Providers might think patients prefer non-ORS treatments such as antibiotics or dislike ORS because of poor taste and perceptions that ORS is not a real medicine.
Providers could be responding to financial incentives to sell more profitable alternatives (ORS) is inexpensive and antibiotics generate nearly double the profit).
ORS stock-outs. Additionally, Provider misperceptions that patients do not want ORS play the biggest role in the under prescribing of ORS as estimated as 42% of under prescribing, whereas stock-outs and financial incentives explained only 6% and 5% respectively. Also, 28% providers prescribed/dispensed ORS when standardised patients expressed no preference, and 55% prescribed ORS when they expressed an ORS preference.