Symptoms and Treatment Profile of Diarrheal Disease below Six Month Infants with or without Antibiotic Admitted to, Institute of Child Health and Shishu Sasthya Foundation Hospital (ICH & SSF)

Abstract

Diarrhea is one of the principal causes of morbidity and mortality among children in the developing world and is the second leading killer of children under the age of five years, accounting for approximately 1.6 million deaths annually. An estimated 17 percent of the annual 10.8 million deaths in children aged less than five years are estimated to be caused by diarrhea. While international programs encouraging the use of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) and other interventions have helped to lower these rates, diarrheal disease remains a very serious public health issue for children across the globe. Recently, strong evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of new, low osmolarity ORS and zinc supplementation catalyzed an international call to action urging countries to adopt new treatment guidelines and increase efforts to improve ORS coverage. At the end of 2007, 34 Countdown priority countries had adopted both new guidelines and 17 more had adopted one or the other. The aim of this study was to get information of young children below six months with diarrhoea admitted to Institute of Child Health and Shishu Sasthya Foundation Hospital (ICH & SSF) about their symptoms and treatment profile. Hospital records of eighteen children aged below six months admitted to ICH & SSF reviewed for the purpose of getting information about the symptoms and treatment profile for those infants. The common symptoms of the study infants were loose watery stool, fever, cough, vomiting, swelling, etc. Most of the patients were treated with KOLORIDE infusion which is a balanced combination of electrolytes, ORS and some patients were kept under NPO (nothing per oral) for sometime. Among 18 patients, only 2 children received antibiotic therapy. The common antibiotics used for treating the patients were ciprozoid (ciprofloxacin) and Civox (ciprofloxacin). The result of this study shows that the symptoms of the patients disappeared after receiving the appropriate treatment.