Thread by @sheshapatangi1

#DilipMahalanabis

He could've become Multi Billionaire for his invention, the life saving ORS,
but he didn't file for a Patent.

With his treatment, the Case Fatality Ratio in the Refugee Camps came down to 3 from 3.3

Despite this, treatment was met with skepticism from the

https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/1581914298229886977

scientific community with many journals refusing to publish his original paper, it would take 7 more years for oral rehydration therapy to be accepted as a good treatment for dehydration from diarrhea and other diseases.

Dr Dilip Mahalanabis was working in overflowing refugee

camps during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war when he came up with ORS, which The Lancet called “the most important medical discovery of the 20th century.’’

From his research, Dr Mahalanabis knew that a solution of sugar and salt, which would increase water absorption by the

body, could save lives. He and his team then prepared solutions of salt and glucose in water and began storing them in large drums, from where patients or their relatives could help themselves.

Dr Mahalanabis later wrote in WHO’s South-East Asia Journal of Public Health about

that period in 1971, “Available resources for the treatment of cholera were mobilised but basic handicaps still existed. The huge amounts of intravenous fluids that would be required, plus the problems of transport and lack of trained personnel for their administration,

represented an almost insurmountable logistical problem in treating cholera effectively under such circumstances by the standard methods currently in use. We suggested the use of oral fluids as the only recourse in this situation.”

To convince people the new treatment

would work, they were told it was an oral form of saline. “The oral solution that we elected to use consisted of 22 gm glucose (as commercial monohydrate), 3.5 gm sodium chloride (as table salt) and 2.5 gm sodium bicarbonate (as baking soda) per liter of water.

This was the simplest formula, containing the minimum number of ingredients, previously found to be effective in severely ill patients with cholera,” Dr Mahalanabis wrote.

In another article from the Bulletin of the WHO carried by the USA’s National Library of Medicine

Dr Mahalanabis is quoted as saying, “Within two, three weeks, we realised that it [ORS treatment] was working and that it seemed to be all right in the hands of untrained people… We prepared pamphlets describing how to mix salt and glucose and distributed them along the border.

The information was also broadcast on a clandestine Bangladeshi radio station.”

Soon the fatality rate in Dr Mahalanabis’s camp was down to 3 per cent, compared with the 20 and 30 per cent in camps that used only intravenous fluids.

It's a matter of shame that the govt of

Thailand recognised his greatness & rewarded him with their highest civilian award "Prince Mahidol" in 2006 & we, not even a Padma.

Between, Dr Dilip donated his entire life savings to Children Hospital.

#ForgottenHeroes

#VANDEMATARAM