Lying on a blue plastic sheet in a makeshift, crowded hospital ward, Riyadh Islam, 4, cries out for water.
His grandmother, who has been watching the dehydrated child toss and turn in discomfort for hours, quickly gives him a drink from a steel cup and murmurs comforting words.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Islam, son of a motorized rickshaw driver, needs all the comfort he can get. He is one of tens of thousands of Bangladeshis suffering from severe diarrhea, the messy aftermath of the worst floods in this impoverished nation for 15 years.
Although the river levels have dropped in the past 10 days, the lack of clean drinking water in some waterlogged areas and the contamination of wells have led to a sharp spike in cases of waterborne diseases, particularly diarrhea.
Officials said yesterday that over 140,000 had fallen ill with diarrhea in the past four weeks and at least 70 had died. Most cases were reported this month as flood waters started to fall. Some newspapers put the death toll at around 150.
Across low-lying Bangladesh and eastern India, more than 1,720 people have died from drowning, snakebites and disease since the start of last month as annual monsoon rains caused rivers to overflow into densely populated areas.
In Bangladesh, the government has sent out more than 4,000 medical teams to contain the diarrhea outbreak and authorities said the situation was well under control.
But a visit to the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Re-search, Bangladesh -- famous for creating the Oral Rehydration Solution -- shows it is a tough battle.
Staff have used bamboo and tarpaulins to convert a parking lot and a reception area into temporary wards to deal with the rush.
Hundreds of diarrhea patients, mainly from teeming Dhaka slums particularly badly hit by the floods, lie on plastic sheets on rows of metal cots and wooden beds. Serious cases have saline drips attached to their hands.
More than half of the admissions are children.
Beds and sheets have a hole in them with a plastic funnel to take patients' waste to already partially filled buckets below. Liberal use of disinfectant cannot totally mask the fetid smell.
Lokman Hossain, a thin 6-year-old, looks scared as he lies with a saline needle stuck to his hand.
"He was in very bad condition for three days. His stool was like water and he is very weak," said Mohammad Firoz, a teenage cousin who is looking after him.
Asked how he is feeling, Hossain whispers: "I'm okay."
A tearful mother pleads with a harried nurse to attend to her semi-delirious child as more patients are wheeled in.
Research center spokesman Ishtiaque Zaman said the number of patients had soared since the beginning of the month as people in waterlogged areas with little or no sanitation started to fall ill.
"We have stopped research work and are just tending to patients," Zaman said.
With large areas of the country still submerged, the World Health Organization has forecast a further possible rise in waterborne diseases, pneumonia and skin and eye infections.
The doctors at the center have little time to talk.
"We are very, very busy," Anjan Das said, as he rushed to attend to a patient who had just been wheeled into the packed, 100m-long ward.
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
RUSHED: The US pushed for the October deal to be ready for a ceremony with Trump, but sometimes it takes time to create an agreement that can hold, a Thai official said Defense officials from Thailand and Cambodia are to meet tomorrow to discuss the possibility of resuming a ceasefire between the two countries, Thailand’s top diplomat said yesterday, as border fighting entered a third week. A ceasefire agreement in October was rushed to ensure it could be witnessed by US President Donald Trump and lacked sufficient details to ensure the deal to end the armed conflict would hold, Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketkeow said after an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur. The two countries agreed to hold talks using their General Border Committee, an established bilateral mechanism, with Thailand
RSS