THE TELEGRAPH, JUNE 5, 1971
CHOLERA ‘OUT OF CONTROL’
By fan Ward in Calcutta
The cholera epidemic in West Bengal is “totally out of control,” the State’s Health Director, Dr. Mira Harilal Saha, said yesterday.
Repealing urgent requests for international aid he said: “We need anti-cholera vaccine, rapid injection machines, antibiotics, powdered milk, in fact, anything and everything that people can give in any quantity.”
Dr. Saha said ten to twelve thousand cases of cholera had been reported along an 800-mile stretch of the East Pakistan frontier.
About 2,550 East Pakistan refugees had died from the disease which has yet to claim a victim among the local people, who have been vaccinated, on the Indian side of the border.
Dr. Saha’s plea came as independent relief agencies in Calcutta reported that the flood of evacuees from East Pakistan had swollen the refugee population inside the Indian border by a million in the past week.
The total in the states of Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal is now believed to be nearly five million.
Dr. Saha said the cholera affected frontier stretched from Dinajpur in the north, down through Malda, Murshidabad, and Nadia through to a point on the border opposite Calcutta.
While the problems arising when homeless people flood in to a pitifully poor countryside are immense, wild distortions occur as political interests manipulate statistics to serve their own ends.
Adding to the confusion is a general breakdown in the flow of information from outlying areas.
West Bengal health officials maintain that cholera is “rampant” and “totally out of control.” Death estimates range from 5(X) to 5,000, depending on the informant.
Yet the chief medical officer in Nadia, recognized as the hardest hit area, with some 6,000 confirmed cases, refers to the epidemic as “precarious, but certainly not out of control.”
The officer, Dr. S. Chakravarty, said yesterday, “It is impossible to tell whether cholera or similar diseases like gastro-enteritis are causing the highest mortality rate.”
The extent of the epidemic could not be judged accurately because of the lack of laboratory facilities. The bulk of the victims, he said, were women and children.
Dr. Chakravarty said his department was short of vaccines, drips, saline, glucose and antibiotics. Nursing staff were also needed.
Local Indians, he said were becoming agitated over the possibility of contamination by the refugees.
Bodies of victims had been left on road sides leading from the border and some had been thrown into the local Jalangi river, threatening serious pollution. Guards had been stationed on the river bank to prevent people using the water.
The refugee crisis is shaping up as a major issue between the Central Government in New Delhi and the five separate State authorities that have suddenly had millions of homeless peasants thrust upon lands within their jurisdiction.