The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, recently made a two-year gift to the Yale School of Medicine to further the study of diarrhea and diarrhea-related illnesses, which claim the lives of over 1.5 million children each year.
Almost all diarrhea-related deaths occur in developing countries, where access to clean water is often limited, and medical facilities are frequently sparse and primitive. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine will use the $1.8 million in grant funds to study the effectiveness of new oral rehydration solutions for diarrhetic patients, since dehydration is a major part of the more serious side effects of diarrhea.
Dr. Henry J. Binder, a professor of medicine at Yale, said that "[t]he development of ORS to treat diarrhea more than three decades ago has been considered one of the most important milestones in therapeutics during the last century." His team has proposed a modified version of the current standard product which adds a starch that reduces fluid loss. Binder says improving oral rehydration has been responsible for a steep fall-off in infant mortality in the developing world. Binder has been working on and studying various aspects of diarrhea for over 15 years.
Yale has also been in the news recently for another notable step towards better children’s health: The university’s Rudd Center for Food Policy issued a report today claiming that some of the most heavily marketed children’s breakfast cereals are also some of the most unhealthy. That study was performed with the help of funds from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which supports some of the same causes as the Gates Foundation.