INTERVENTION IN NEED OF DISTRIBUTION
Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is a combination of salts and sugar delivered as a sachet to be mixed with a liter of water.
Combined with a short course of zinc, it is the standard treatment for childhood diarrhea, and a full course costs under $0.50.
Diarrhea still kills more than 400,000 children under five every year; at full coverage, ORS would prevent up to 93% of those deaths.
“Co-packs” of ORS and zinc are well-established, the problem is distribution. Global ORS use has been flat for a decade, and in many places children with diarrhea are treated with nothing, or with an antibiotic that will not help. In Kano, Nigeria, Clear Solutions had community health workers hand free co-packs to caregivers before anyone was ill; across 20 communities and roughly 6,900 children under five, ORS treatment rose from under half to over 90%.
CAN YOU INCREASE ACCESS?
Design a new intervention that gets free, co-packaged ORS and zinc into the homes of children under five, in a district where
most families are going without.
Your concept note should answer these questions:
01: Where will you work, and how do you know the need is there? Choose areas with high under-five
diarrhea burden and low ORS use and show us the need. Outline what current distribution of ORS looks like
and why your program provides additional value.
02: How will you get the product into homes? We expect most ventures to have community health workers
deliver free ORS+Zinc co-packs door-to-door. Other strategies may include layering into a campaign that
already visits under-5s or distribution at a fixed-point.
03 Where will you buy it, and how does it reach your distributors? Name your supplier, the price you
expect per co-pack, and how stock travels to the community.
04: How will you know it worked? Tell us how you identify households with children under five, what you record as you distribute, and how you measure under-five diarrhea episodes treated with ORS. We recommend household surveys sampled across the distribution area.
05 Who pays at scale? The long-run payer is usually the government. What is your path from a three-month pilot to someone else funding this?
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
Design a new organization that distributes free ORS and zinc (ORSZ) to caregivers of children under five. Propose a pilot distributing co-packaged ORSZ treatments to caregivers of 3,000-6,000 children aged under-5 (1 or 2 co-packs per child), with caregiver education on ORSZ usage, in a single area within three months, with a plan to scale across a district or state within five years. The strongest applications are specific about supply, transport, and who does the handover.
D-Prize will award winners up to $20,000 to fund your pilot, with the goal that you fundraise
from others to scale.
Apply today: https://www.d-prize.org/Round1Packet
