Survey of oral fluid therapy practices in South Africa

The objectives of this study were to document the official oral fluid therapy (OFT) policies of all the ministries of health in South Africa and of the four provincial authorities, to determine what methods of OFT are used in hospitals providing paediatric care, to determine the OFT methods recommended by hospital staff for use at home, to establish the level of support for the idea of one national policy for OFT and to determine what senior academic paediatricians think about these issues. We conducted structured telephonic interviews of professional staff in charge of paediatric wards in 159 randomly selected hospitals providing general inpatient care. The hospitals were stratified as private, provincial and 'homeland'. We also interviewed the directors-general or the secretaries or their deputies in each ministry of health as well as directors of hospital services or their deputies in each one of the four provinces of the Republic. Lastly, we spoke to the academic heads of paediatric departments in each of the country's eight medical schools. The results show that the use of OFT for inpatient care of diarrhoeal disease is far from universal, and that the picture with regard to promotion of home OFT is even less favourable. We identified an unacceptable diversity in the OFT methods being promoted as well as a degree of resistance to the development of one national policy. We recommend that one policy, based on the recommendations of the South African Paediatric Association, be adopted by all health authorities in South Africa as a matter of urgency.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)