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Aid agencies were struggling yesterday to get relief to millions of villagers marooned in north-east India, Nepal and Bangladesh who have been hit by devastating floods, as the Red Cross warned that as few as 2 per cent of those affected were getting the help they needed.
Up to 20 million people across the whole of south Asia are believed to have been affected by the most severe monsoon rains in living memory, according to Unicef. Eastern India was facing a health crisis as hospitals in the region were overwhelmed by people suffering from waterborne diseases. Health workers and aid groups in Assam in north-east India were working around the clock to treat and feed many of the three million people displaced or surrounded by floodwaters with the limited medicines and supplies available.
Elsewhere, villagers were getting desperate and hungry. "Our family survived for a week on buffalo milk, but now the animal has stopped producing milk as it has gone without food for days," said Meghu Yadav, a villager in the Samastipur district of impoverished Bihar state in the north of the country.
Devendra Tak of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said: "There are many millions of people who are really in anguish, marooned in water, and relief has really not reached enough people."
The scale of the devastation remains unclear. Unicef said the situation was "still so overwhelming" that it was proving difficult to estimate the numbers of people displaced and killed, but news agencies reported that at least 1100 had so far died.
Army helicopters dropped emergency food supplies for villagers stranded in Bihar, and aid organisations were trying to reach remote regions of the state in boats loaded with vital provisions.
In Bihar, the worst affected area in India, where as many as 70,000 homes are thought to have been destroyed, villagers built temporary encampments on railway tracks or raised highways. The Army began to evacuate people and bring help to the estimated 10 million in the state affected by the floods.
In the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, villagers were seen by TV news crews clinging to treetops and screaming for help. "The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react," Vinod Kumar, a resident of one village, said.
"Even people accustomed to flooding perceive the severity of this one," said Marzio Babille, Unicef India's head of health. He estimated that half a million children under five in the state were not getting the help they needed.
Protests broke out across the state as resentment at the local government mounted over a perceived failure to protect residents from the effects of the annual monsoon. One person was killed and more than 20 injured during clashes with the police.
Beyond the immediate misery, aid agencies warned that the long-term implications would be severe. Waterborne diseases will strike as the floodwaters become stagnant and polluted. Outbreaks of cholera, malaria, encephalitis and typhoid are expected to follow the receding waters.
The economic damage is likely to be severe, with harvests ruined and seed stocks destroyed. "In some areas, livelihoods are completely gone. The scale of it is unprecedented," said a Unicef spokeswoman.
The damage was not restricted to rural regions. In parts of Mumbai, television images showed fathers wading through waist-high water carrying children on their heads to seek hospital treatment.
There was also frustration in Delhi, which has been drenched in monsoon rains all week, at the failure of the local government to protect the city; roads were blocked and highways washed away. An editorial in the Hindustan Times said: "Come the rains and life goes down the drains."
Some seven million people have been affected in Bangladesh, where floods have spread to 41 of the nation's 64 districts.
"We have been virtually starving for several days but there seems to be no one to come to help us," said Majeda Begum, perched on the roof of her house in Manikganj district with her 5-year-old granddaughter.
In north west Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2000 people who fled his village for higher ground.
"The floods have taken away all I had. Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will survive."
- Observer
