Bangladesh shows how to keep children alive

FOR adventurous travellers, it is merely an embarrassing nuisance. But among poor people diarrhoea is a killer. As many as half a million children are thought to die every year from enteric diseases, including cholera and dysentery. Repeated infections also weaken them, laying them open to attack from other killers such as pneumonia. Diarrhoea can even change a population’s appearance. One reason Indian children are shorter than sub-Saharan African children from families of similar means is that they fall sick more often.So it is delightful to report that one of Asia’s poorest countries, Bangladesh, is making huge progress against this scourge (see ). In one part of the country with particularly good data, deaths from diarrhoea and other enteric diseases have fallen by 90% in the past two decades. Along with a far-reaching vaccination programme and steady economic growth, that has helped drive down the number of childhood deaths. In 1990 the under-five death rate in Bangladesh was 54% higher than the world average. Now it is 16% lower.