Definitions
loose stools, diarrhea, cholera [, dehydration, diarrheal, diarrhoeal
DEHYDRATION, CHOLERA
A treatment center visit for diarrhea was considered to be any visit in which a patient reported having 3 or more loose stools or 1–2 or an indeterminate number of loose stools with evidence of dehydration in the 24 h before presentation. If the date of discharge from an earlier diarrheal visit and the date of symptom onset for the subsequent diarrheal visit were within 7 days of one another, both visits were considered part of the same diarrheal episode. The onset of a diarrheal episode was defined as starting when the patient first reported loose or liquid stools prior to the first diarrhoeal visit of the episode. A cholera episode was defined as a diarrheal episode in which a fecal specimen from any constituent visit yielded V. cholerae O1 or O139 and where bloody stool was not reported. Severely dehydrating cholera, defined by WHO criteria, was defined when the patient exhibited severe dehydration during any visit of the episode In the same trial population, we developed a dichotomous variable that classified households as having “Better WASH” or “Not Better WASH” at baseline and that was predictive of the ensuing risk of severe cholera [