Washington Star/Evening Star

The U.S. Government is adding $15 million to the crash program for aid to the estimated 4.5 million East Pakistani refugees now in India.
Frank L. Kellogg, the State Department official in charge of the American effort, said yesterday that $10 million in food and $5 million in cash for medicine and equipment would be channeled to India, mainly through the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees.
The United States has already committed $2.5 million of an international total which before the latest American contribution reached $26 million. The U.S. contribution will go through an airlift which, if the advance trials now in process work out, will begin early next week with three C-130 military transports.
Kellogg said the highest priority is being given to collecting one million doses of anticholera vaccine to combat an epidemic which has broken out in the West Bengal state where most of the refugees are centered.
According to Kellogg, refugees are still coming into India from East Pakistan at a rate of 50,000 to 100,000 a day. According to World Health Organization figures, 10,000 in West Bengal have been hospitalized with cholera and 3,000 have already died.
Britain has already sent one million doses of anti-cholera vaccine. But given the number of refugees in the area, and the poor sanitary conditions there, officials here are worried that enough vaccine exists to stop the epidemic.