Using the National Family Health Survey to Evaluate India's Intensified Diarrhea Control Fortnight

Abstract

Oral rehydration solution (ORS) has the potential to avert almost all deaths from diarrheal diseases. Nevertheless, in poor nations only about half of children with diarrhea receive ORS. Each year since 2014, India has run an Intensified Diarrhea Control Fortnight to increase ORS treatment. A key element of the Fortnight plan is free distribution of ORS to over 100 million homes with young children. We compared ORS usage reported in the 2015/2016 National Family Health Survey in the 3 months before the 2015 and 2016 Fortnights to the 2 months after. We control for state fixed effects and for observable characteristics of the child and household. To reduce data mining, we use a short predetermined set of controls and also use a machine learning method: cross-fit partialing-out lasso logistic regression. ORS usage rose about 4.0 percentage points after the Fortnight, closing about 7% of the gap to universal usage. The increase is not statistically significant at conventional levels. These point estimates are inconsistent with government claims that, in 2015, 63% of homes received free ORS. The Fortnight could benefit from more transparent monitoring, a more rigorous evaluation, and improvements in operations. Funding Statement: IRLE at UC Berkeley funded this research. Declaration of Interests: We declare no conflicts of interest.