Conclusions
Existing interventions to prevent or treat diarrheal diseases have proven their efficacy in reducing mortality, but a major challenge for the next 10 years will be to scale up these interventions to achieve universal utilization coverage. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal to reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two-thirds by 2015 will be easier to attain if the scale-up goals are reached. New products and tools could significantly improve the efficacy of these interventions—for example, rapid specific diagnostics, new treatment strategies based on reversing the pathophysiology of the infection, simple and effective ways to produce clean water and control human waste, and vaccines to prevent illness. However, these products and tools will not become widely available in time to influence the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Continued investment in diarrheal disease research across the spectrum of basic, social and behavioral, and applied investigations is, therefore, essential, including expanded behavioral research to understand how parents assess risk and how actionable health messages can be presented in different cultures and settings.
