Infectious diarrhoea is the second most common cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The WHO estimates that about 2.5 million people die annually as a result of infectious diarrhoea, most of them children. In 2002 about 1.6 million children under the age of five in developing countries died from diarrhoeal disease. In the United States between 211-375 million episodes of diarrhoeal disease occur annually resulting in 73 million physician consultations and 1.8 million hospitalisations with over 3,000 deaths.