Disease spreads death in flood-ravaged South Asia

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Rain fell on the flooded Bangladesh capital on Wednesday, compounding the misery of half a million people crammed into emergency shelters as waterborne diseases struck down people across South Asia.

Four weeks of the worst flooding in years has killed about 1,100 across South Asia and economic costs are rising with the casualties. No let-up was in sight for Bangladesh with its weather office forecasting more rain this week.

"I have nowhere to go. Allah seems to be unkind to me,” said Safura Begum, a 35-year-old mother living on a Dhaka pavement with her young children.

The floods have devastated farm land, damaged thousands of kilometres of roads and bridges, cut rail links and even briefly closed Bangladesh’s third-biggest airport in the city of Sylhet.

Thousands of medical teams spread out across Bangladesh, two thirds of which is under water, to try to stop epidemics among the millions of people forced from their homes.

Nearly 100 people died overnight as the floods spread diseases across huge areas of India and Bangladesh, officials said on Wednesday.

At least 65 people died from disease in Bangladesh in the past week and an official said on Wednesday reports have come in of 5,000 suffering from diarrhoea across the country.

In India’s oil-rich northeastern state of Assam, an oil refinery stopped operating on Wednesday as the floods blocked the movement of its products.

Waterborne diseases killed 33 people in the state in the 24 hours to midday on Wednesday, Assam officials said.

“People are dying of dysentery, high fever and diarrhoea because they are living in unhygienic conditions and do not have pure drinking water and food,” Assam Health Minister Bhumidhar Burman said.

HUNGRY BABIES

Thousands of babies are suffering from Malnutrition in Assam because the distribution of food has largely ground to a halt. Burman said the government had ordered the emergency purchase of barley and biscuits for infants.

In India’s impoverished Bihar state in its low-lying east, most rivers were receding but many parts of the state were still inundated. Eight more deaths were reported pushing the state’s death toll to 460.

“It is the highest number of deaths in flooding in the past decade,” Bihar Relief Minister Ram Vichar Rai told Reuters. The death toll would rise as receding river waters exposed more bodies, he said.

Soldiers in boats rescued scores of people perched on the roofs of their submerged thatch-and-bamboo houses in northern Bihar and Assam and helicopters dropped food.

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