A randomized controlled study was carried out at the Children's Emergency Hospital, Khartoum to evaluate the acceptability, safety and efficacy of (rice or sorghum) cereal-based oral rehydration solutions (ORS) relative to that of the standard WHO ORS formulation in children with acute diarrhoea. Ninety-six children whose ages ranged from 6 to 40 months were enrolled in the study. Thirty-two of them were allocated to the rice-based ORS group, 34 to the sorghum-based ORS group and 30 to the control group. Cereal-based ORS solutions were found to shorten the duration of diarrhoea and to reduce both the stool volume and the frequency of diarrhoea and vomiting as well as the mean total ORS intake. These effects were more marked with the sorghum-based ORS than with the rice-based ORS. By the end of day 3, 50% of patients in the rice ORS group and 67.6% in the sorghum ORS group had recovered compared with 40% from the standard ORS group.