Every spring the floodwaters come. They inundate one third of all Bangladesh . In Ramhat, where 7-year-old Manna Jiauddin lives, water is gathered from community pumps and stored in containers. During the flood season drinking water is easily contaminated. Diarrheal disease infections spread quickly.

In April, Manna contracted bloody diarrhea. The onslaught was sudden and the daily struggle for life turned into desperate hardship, as Manna fought off the dehydration that diarrhea causes. His mother rushed him to the local hospital, run by the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research. Known locally as The Cholera Hospital, the facility sees up to 1000 patients a day who are admitted for diarrhea.

Manna was quickly diagnosed and provided with a high level of medical care. During his weeklong stay in the hospital, Manna received antibiotics and Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT), which replaces lost fluids and essential minerals and salts. Released from the hospital Manna was still too weak to walk and had to be carried home. It would take several weeks for the emaciated boy to fully recover.

Manna was one of the lucky ones. ORT saved his life. Today, OneWorld Health is developing new medicines to treat diarrhea through an even more effective approach that prevents the massive fluid loss that can lead to death by dehydration. This new drug is now cleared by the FDA for Phase I clinical trials. Used in conjunction with ORT this we believe this new drug could save the lives of many children suffering from diarrheal disease.

Cholera and other Diarrheal Diseases account for as much as 22% of all childhood deaths around the world. That's 4,500 deaths each day. The pediatric death toll due to diarrheal illnesses exceeds that of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.  In poor countries, diarrheal disease is second only to pneumonia in causing the deaths of children under five years old. Every week, 31,000 children in low-income countries die from diarrheal diseases.

We're working to change that.

We're opening up a new front in the battle against Cholera and other Diarrheal Diseases . The FDA has recently approved Phase I trials of a new drug designed to reduce or prevent the massive fluid loss through the intestine that often leads to death. Used in conjunction with ORT, these anti-secretory drugs could mean faster recovery and many more lives saved.

The first synthetic drug of its kind for secretory diarrhea caused by cholera and other diarrheal diseases iOWH032, whose development was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, acts by targeting the cells that line the intestines. This prevents Diarrheal Diseases from forcing the body to secrete massive amounts of fluid that can lead to dehydration and death.

In 2006, OneWorld Health received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop novel anti-secretory drugs to be used as an adjunct to ORT that will safely reduce stool output and shorten duration of diarrheal episodes.

To identify a potential new drug for the treatment of Cholera and other Diarrheal Diseases , we began a research partnership with Roche in the spring of 2008 to screen over 780,000 molecules from their compound library. One year later we successfully completed our first screening campaign and announced that up to 40 new drug leads would be selected for further study intended to identify a new treatment for childhood diarrhea.

In 2009 we began work with Novarits Institutes for BioMedical Research to select promising drug candidates ready for pre-clinical testing. Based on Novartis' past work in cystic fibrosis, this novel drug is now in Phase I clinical trials to treat secretory diarrhea.

In 2011 we partnered with Anacor Pharmaceuticals to discover antibacterial compounds for treating bloody diarrhea (shigellosis).

In 2011 we also partnered with Center for World Health and Medicine at St. Louis University to develop new drugs to combat diarrhea.