PLIGHT OF REFUGEES-1
Worst Phase of Cholera Epidemic over
In Border Areas By Manojit Mitra, The worst phase of the cholera epidemic in the border areas is now over, although the hospitals are still overcrowded and fresh cases are arriving daily. During the past few days, the influx has dwindled to a few hundred evacuees a day at every point drug and saline supplies have improved and the inoculation campaign has made some headway. But doctors fear that if the daily influx reverts to the magnitude of the May 28-June 1 period, the situation may worsen again.
It is true that at the initial stage of the epidemic the medical arrangements fell far short of the requirements; saline supplies were extremely inadequate and there was lack of coordination among the different agencies involved. But the fact remains that the sudden and phenomenal increase in the number of daily arrivals was mainly responsible for the crisis. Relief efforts were shockingly inadequate as none could foresee the spurt in the influx. The epidemic of cholera and other stomach ailments had started among the refugees inside Bangladesh. By the time they arrived here many were dead or dying. Since the old camps could not accommodate so many people they kept trekking ahead in search of food and shelter. The longer they traveled, the greater the death toll and the epidemic spread further.
The official death toll is based on the reports from hospitals and health centers where most patients are taken from the camps. But it is impossible to ascertain how many more had died by the road side and were buried there. The floors and corridors of every health center are jammed with patients. Doctors work round the clock. The rate at which the epidemic was spreading at the beginning of this month has been checked but for the small and ill equipped health centers the pressure of work is still tremendous.
At Karimpur in Nadia one of the worst-affected areas. I found dozens of patients “ lying on the verandah. They included many children, who were emaciated and hardly able to speak. The Medical Officer-in-Charge said however that even this was better than the situation on June 1. Then he had to accommodate about 150 patients in his 20 bed hospital and could not provide saline to most of them. “We were not prepared for such a vast epidemic” he said. Along with the patients some bodies had also been dumped on the verandah of the health center. · Until Friday, although 901 patients had been treated at the health center of whom 130 died. The epidemic had started to spread among the local people. 11 of whom were admitted to the health center but this was checked. The medical officer was however confident that now they were in a position to fight the epidemic. The initial difficulties caused by the shortage of saline and the lack of coordination were over.
SALINE FROM U.K.
While we talked, a car stopped outside and the health centre employees stated unloading cratess of saline sets sent from Norfolk in the U. K. There were 60 packets each containing six bottles of saline. The capacity of a bottle is 1,000 cc which is exactly double the capacity of the locally available bottles. The doctor said that in addition to his usual staff strength three Bangladesh doctors and three others deputed by the State Government were working. Saline supplies are arriving directly from Calcutta airport.
Many patients have been moved from the roadside to these health centers. Those who recover return to the camps. The flow of patients is constant but with the fall in the rate of influx the number of patients has decreased to some extent. In the 24 parganas the epidemic could not assume such vast proportions as in Nadia, though the situation is bad enough. At the Bangaon Hospital there are about 100 patients in the wards daily on an average. The number of fresh cases went up to 89 on June 6 and now it has come down to about 50 on a daily average. Five to nine patients died every day about 80% of the patients were from the camps. At the Hasnabad health centre there are about 120 patients in the wards on a daily average. The number of daily arrivals mounted to 86 on May 29. On Thursday, it has decreased to 31. Doctors said that at one stage there were about 450 cholera patients in the 150-bed hospital. Then the hospital needed about 400 bottles of saline daily and found it hard to get even 100. The Medical Officer-in-charge said that now the supplies were better although occasionally they were inadequate.
Inoculation camps have been set up on the roads and many of them are manned by Army personnel. The new evacuees are being inoculated and those who have not taken inoculation are being told to do so because the ration cards are being issued at many camps after inoculation. Doctors, however, say that inoculation is no guarantee against this epidemic. At the Bongaon hospital, a doctor told this reporter that many of the patients had earlier been inoculated and he had treated a case in which the patient had been inoculated three weeks before falling ill.
Doctors said that the inoculation counteracted a particular bacillus which caused cholera but that was not the disease with many evacuees. Many had been attacked by gastro-enteritis and other kinds of stomach troubles like diarrhoes and dysentery. The symptoms are similar and the evacuees are in so poor shape that they sueeumb to any infection.
|A large number of evacuees who have arrived in the past fortnight are from Faridpur where the Pakistani Army aided by the Muslim League and Jamait-eIslami, have gone on a fresh spree of house-burning and torture. Thousands of people have been hounded out of the interior villages. The main roads are under the Army’s occupation and the evacuees are afraid of travelling along them. Even those coming from areas close to the border have to make detours while speaking to evacuees at the Shikarpur border in Nadia. I heard that they had travelled 100 to 150 miles to reach the border.
UNHYGIENIC FOOD
The epidemic started during this trip. Each family walked for seven to ten days through rain and mud. Whatever food was available was unhygienic but the hungry evacuees had no choice.Continuous exposure, endless walking, malnutrition, exhaustion and occasional consumption of unhygienic food caused the stomach troubles. Children and old people were dying already in Bangladesh. The young and middle-aged men kept on fighting but every day they became more vulnerable to all kinds of infections.
After entering West Bengal, they started buying whatever food they could afford. Most of them carried little money and had to silence the crying children by giving them an ice-cream or a packet of chanachur which acted like poison on an empty stomach. The thousands of people who started coming in the last week of May could not be accommodated in the camps and had to sleep on the roadside. The children contracted broncho-pneumonia by sleeping in the rain. There were many T. B. patients among the evacuees. Several cholera patients admitted to the Hasnabad health center were found to have tuberculosis. The evacuees who have not been able to make their way into camps are living on the road in temples and abandoned houses on verandahs and or fields.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 06.06.1971