Disease
stalks Indian flood victims
Wed.
August 8th,
2007
Story by Kamil Zaheer
Edited by GEKA - G.D.M.
BOCHAHA, India (Reuters) - Millions of
malnourished Indian children are vulnerable to disease after South
Asia's worst floods in years, officials and aid groups said on
Wednesday, calling for urgent assistance.
Hundreds of UNICEF workers
rushed to immunise and supply rehydration fluid sachets to children in
the impoverished eastern state of Bihar, where millions are stranded on
embankments or living in primitive shelters on highways.
They are exposed to sweltering temperatures,
sudden downpours and filthy conditions, making them sitting ducks for
infections. Hundreds of children have already caught diarrhoea, reports
say.
The latest bout of monsoon flooding, which
began about three weeks ago, is said to be the worst in living memory
in parts of Bihar. It has affected about 30 million people across
India, 10 million of them in densely populated Bihar alone.
On Wednesday, fresh flooding
was reported from the eastern state of Orissa and the western state of
Gujarat, where six people were killed following heavy rains over the
last two days, officials said.
Another 20 million people in
neighbouring Bangladesh are coping with flood waters that have swamped
more than half of the low-lying, riverine nation.
UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said in a statement he was worried about the "economic
devastation" faced by flood victims. But he praised what he called a
"prompt and effective" response, adding that the UN remained ready to
help.
In Bihar, children were seen
running down embankments to grab food sacks dropped by occasional
helicopter sorties. But they lost out to the adults and often returned
empty-handed and bewildered as the aircraft pulled away.
"In the big scramble for
relief, kids and women are not prioritised and we need to focus on
them, especially where malnutrition is high," said Marzio Babille, head
of health for UNICEF in India.
"ENDLESS
WAIT FOR HELP"
Five-year-old Kanti Kumari
sat outside a makeshift shelter of bamboo canes and a black plastic
sheet and wished she could go back to her sturdier thatched
home, seen submerged in the distance in Bochaha village. "My ear
hurts," said the skinny girl whose face was smudged with dirt. "I feel
hungry often."
Her mother Sheila Devi said no doctor or health worker had
visited her family of six daughters and rickshaw-puller husband,
despite the fact they lived by the side of a pot-holed national highway
where trucks regularly ply.
Nor have they received food,
and school is not an option.
"They barely can get
anything to eat. How can we even think of school," said Devi, holding
her two-month-old baby, whose face was marked by rashes.
About 545
people have been killed in the floods, including 192 in Bangladesh
which reported 28 new deaths on Wednesday, mostly by drowning, disease
and snakebites.
More than 50,000 people were
suffering from diarrhoea in the flood-hit districts of Bangladesh and
many more were sick with other waterborne diseases, authorities said.
More than 400,000 people had taken shelter in relief centres.
"We hate to sit idle or rely
on doles for a living. But the cruel floods have made us jobless," said
Fahima Begum of Jasaldia village, about an hour by road
from the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
"I am trying to keep my
children alive, at least," Fahima said as her son and two daughters
sipped a potful of gruel.
India's Bihar, home to about
90 million people, is one of the country's poorest and most lawless
states. Nearly 60 percent of its young children are malnourished, far
higher than the 46 percent average nationally.
Officials said caring for
millions of flood-hit children was daunting as hundreds of primary
health centres (PHCs) -- the first point of healthcare in rural India
-- had been flooded.
UNICEF said millions could
fall sick with malaria, dengue fever and other diseases if authorities
did not bring food and medicine within days to those stranded.
(Additional reporting by
Nizam Ahmed in Jasaldia, Serajul Islam Quadir in Dhaka and Rupam Jain
Nair in Ahmedabad)
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