Diarrheal disease continues to be one of the leading causes of child morbidity and mortality globally, with more than 2.5 billion cases every year, contributing to 14 percent of deaths among children under five years old and 11 percent among newborns.
We manage diarrhea control programs in more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Our programs ensure that families have the tools to maintain the health of their children.
Our network combats diarrhea-related morbidity and mortality by educating individuals about purifying drinking water in the home, practicing improved hygiene and offering treatment.
For treatment, we promote the use of oral rehydration solution (ORS) and Zinc, as well as associated behaviors to increase fluids and continue feeding to reduce the duration and severity of diarrhea and to prevent future episodes.
We are committed to continuously improving the quality of existing interventions and providing technical assistance in creating new programs. Our network collects and distributes best practices, evaluation data and lessons learned; pilots new initiatives; and ensures country programs have access to the most current and relevant data and intervention strategies.
We also foster and maintain key relationships within the broader international Child Survival and Safe Water communities. As key partner to both local and donor governments and advocate for child survival issues and funding, we implement technically strong diarrheal disease prevention and treatment programs to improve the health of children around the world.
We have distributed over 426 million oral rehydration solution packets, and almost 9 million full diarrhea treatment kits.
In 2015, we distributed over 2.6 oral rehydration solution million packets, and 3.4 million full diarrhea treatment kits.
Learn more about these solutions.
Disease prevention through improved water, sanitation, hygiene and nutrition remains a major component of our diarrheal disease prevention strategy.
- WASH: Our water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs improve the health of low-income families in the developing world by increasing access to and use of WASH products and services, such as household water treatment and toilets.
- Nutrition: We reduce morbidity and mortality related to undernutrition through prevention of nutritional deficiencies, use of supplements, and therapeutic management of severe acute malnutrition.
We contribute to global efforts to reduce child mortality by implementing integrated case management programs that focus on treatment of pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and acute malnutrition.
- Integrated Case Management: Our integrated case management programs reduce death and severe disease through prompt and effective diagnosis and treatment where and when people need it.
- Diarrhea Treatment Kits: We promote the use of oral rehydration solution and Zinc for the management of diarrhea cases.
- Nutrition: In addition to diarrhea prevention, our nutrition programs play a key role in treatment of the disease.
- PSI Vietnam: Social Marketing for Improved Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene
To address unsafe water, poor hygiene and limited sanitation in rural communities, PSI Vietnam launched a market based sanitation initiative in rural areas of the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands.
- Cost-Effectiveness of Using a Social Franchise Network to Increase Uptake of Oral Rehydration Salts and Zinc for Childhood Diarrhea in Rural Myanmar
This study examines the cost-effectiveness of a PSI initiative in Myanmar that promoted the use of an oral rehydration solution and zinc supplementation through social franchising.
- Rural Sanitation Rapid Market Scan Report
In 2014, PSI/Vietnam conducted a rapid market scan to identify market barriers and potential opportunities to improve rural sanitation access in Dien Bien and Vinh Long, two provinces with the worst sanitation indicators in all of Vietnam. Leveraging PSI/Vietnam’s understanding of rural markets and consumers, the rapid sanitation market scan was designed to identify practical insights from rural households and community influencers, as well as rural supply chain actors linked to sanitation product and service provision. This report describes the market scan findings and offers concrete recommendations to inform future programs.
- Ad for PSI/Myanmar’s Orasel Kit with Mother Bird
Ad for PSI/Myanmar's Orasel Kit to treat and prevent diarrhea for children under 5 years old.
- Private Sector Healthcare Myanmar: Evidence from the ‘Sun’ Social Franchise
As an evidence-based model, social franchising puts high quality healthcare within the reach of people in need around the world. This report showcases results from four studies led by researchers from PSI, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Johns Hopkins University, which demonstrate how social franchising networks, like PSI/Myanmar's Sun Quality Network, improve the quality of health service delivery and health outcomes at-scale, cost effectively and equitably.
- Follow the Need: Recipe for Scaling Up Access to Quality Pneumonia, Diarrhea and Malaria Case Management in South Sudan
Looking at certain 'ingredients,' this case study outlines how PSI and partners are working to scale up access to, quality of, and demand for improved health services and products in South Sudan using integrated community case management (iCCM). It also delineates keys to success and lessons learned from the study.
- PSI’s Integrated Case Management Strategy
This brief explains how integration is at the core of PSI's new organizational strategic plan.
- iCCM: Integrated Community Case Management of Pneumonia, Malaria & Diarrhea
Some 2.5 million child deaths each year are due to pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria- diseases which can be prevented or treated with increased access to simple low-cost interventions. This program brief outlines iCCM in action and what PSI is doing to eradicate these diseases.
- Community Case Management in Cameroon
This cross-sectional study examines outcomes associated with an integrated community case management (CCM) program for malaria and diarrhea implemented in two districts in Cameroon.
- Measurable Results: PSI Child Survival
PSI strives to focus on the needs of children by integrating pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition programs that produce measureable results and ensure a positive impact on the health of children worldwide. This brief provides an overview of these health areas and a description of how PSI is responding.