When a child came to them with diarrhea, all they could offer the mother was a packet of oral rehydration solution (or ORS, a mixture of salt, sugar, potassium chloride, and an antacid to be mixed with water and drunk by the child). But most mothers didn’t believe that ORS could do any good. They wanted what they thought was the right treatment—an antibiotic or an intravenous drip. Once a mother was sent away from the health center with just a packet of ORS, the nurses told us, she never came back. Every year, they saw scores of children die from diarrhea, but they felt utterly powerless.
