The most important medical advance of this [by now : the last] century!!………. ORS Edit

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The most important medical advance of this [by now the Iast] century!!………. ORS

Any idea what that could be? If not read further,please.
In the late 1970s, acute diarrhoea was killing around 5 million children each year. The obvious response to dehydration[hit-yabshut] — giving the child water to drink — did not work because the liquid rushed through the digestive tract too quickly to be absorbed by the body tissues
An intravenous drip could be administered by someone with medical training, but this is completely impractical for most episodes of childhood diarrhoea,
In 1968, researchers in Bangladesh and India discovered that combining glucose and salt to water in the right proportions enabled the liquid to be absorbed through the intestinal wall. So anyone suffering from diarrhoea could replace the lost fluids and salts simply by drinking this solution.[so called ORS ,oral rehydration solution]
One of the first large-scale field applications of oral salts [rehydration = hachzarat nozlim sukar we melachim dereg ha-pe ] took place in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence when outbreaks of cholera swept through refugee camps. Of the 3,700 victims treated with ORS, over 96 per cent survived.
This was absolute amazing !!
Not for nothing that The British medical journal The Lancet has described ORS as “potentially the most important medical advance of this century.”
Home-made versions of ORS are not difficult to make and can help prevent dehydration.
Today I will not describe the symptoms of dehydration and causes of diarrhoea because it will take to much space in this monthly pamphlet.[this pamphlet was composed for the beit knessetAderet Eliyahu in gilo]
I will describe how to make a home-made solution, that can be given to any one with diarrhoea and/or vomiting.
Even if the reason for the diarrhoea or vomiting is one, which needs additional treatment [whatever] it is of huge importance to start giving the ORS as soon and as frequently as possible.[the smaller the child the bigger the chance of dehydration,if you don’t do this .
Small breast fed children should go on being breastfed!! -.but may need extra ORS
[ask your doctor what to do in children of a few months age].
How to prepare an ORS solution??
***take one liter of water
add to the water:[please ,be precise!!]
*** 6 heaped teaspoons [not table spoons!!] of sugar[white sugar,demerara sugar or any regular sugar you have][40 gram ,in case you have a fine weighing scale]
*** 5 times a two- finger pinch of salt [the amount of table salt you can pick up between your dry thumb and the index finger and take such a pinch 5 times]
[for all certainty you can taste a bit of the water ,it should be more or less as salt as tears. if not, check what you did wrong[amount of water ,salt?]
the size of your fingers hardly matter!! [I examined this]
That is it!!!!!!!The “potentially the most important medical advance of this century.”
Can you imagine!!?? Because it saved [and continue to save] so much and so massively human life,which no other discovery in medicine probably did.
[probably polio vaccination belongs in this row as well]
If the diarrhoea is accompanied by vomiting [and even if there is only strong diarroea] it may be proper and important to add the following compounds to the mixture as described above:
*** 3 times two- finger pinch of bicarbonate soda [the amount of bicarbonate soda you can pick up between your dry thumb and the index finger and this 3times]
*** add half a glass of orange juice , strained [sieved][to add potassium to the solution]
you may add commercially packed [squeezed]orange juice [if you don’t have fresh oranges]but it should be 100% pure[no sugar added etc]

Basically , the solution contains:
sugar[glucose] / salt / [ bicarbonate soda / potassium { ashlagan]
summary: 1 liter water+ 6 heaped teaspoons of sugar[40 gram]+5 pinches of salt+3 pinches bicarbonate soda+ half a glass strained orange juice.[pinches are : two finger pinches]
In case there is also vomiting ,then try to give every two minutes a teaspoon of the mixture,don’t stop because of the vomiting.
there is much more to tell ,but space is limited.
there are many other possibilities[ rice instead of sugar],but i tried to give the most simple one which can be easily prepared in every home and which I have been using for some 25 years now.
If you are “lazy” or just find it more comfortable you can buy now ready made packages/tablets all over the world, in Israel these are known as”orset” or “hydran”.
follow the instructions precisely[don’t add anything!!]
these commercial preparations ,as convenient as they may be, are far more expensive then the home made solution and one does not always have them at hand in the middle of the night.
Thanks to the french pharmacy in Gilo for helping with the weighing of the pinches again, after we did this some 25 years ago in Suriname, where I first used this solution.