Over 800,000 doses of cholera vaccine are due to be flown out to India today and a fully-equipped mobile hospital will follow next week as part of the response by British relief charities to the Indian appeals for help.

On Monday the charities' Disaster Emergency Committee is to decide whether to launch an appeal to the British public for further funds to fight cholera, which is threatening to spread from West Bengal to other parts of India.

The cholera vaccine is being provided at a cost of £25,000 by Oxfam, which is considering a further grant of £200,000.

Oxfam's field director in east India, Mr Raymond Cournoyer, who has just returned from the India-Pakistan border area estimates that about 60 million people are at risk from the cholera epidemic. Furthermore, the 4 million Bengali refugees face famine when the monsoon rains start in a few days.

Mr Cournoyer is returning to India on Sunday to coordinate Oxfam's effort. Hard on his heels will go a War on Want mobile hospital and a medical staff of nine under Mgr Bruce Kent, a director of War on Want. At their Monday meeting, the Disaster Emergency Committee will also discuss how to coordinate the British aid in the refugee camps.

The response of the British charities follows an urgent appeal from the Indian medical authorities for outside medical help and supplies of drugs.

Oxfam has already provided two mass injection machines, each capable of delivering 500 doses of cholera vaccine an hour, which were loaned by the Goverment laboratories at Porton. Dr Timothy Lusty, an Oxfordshire farmer who served in Biafra after the civil war ended, has accompanied the machines.

About 45,000 doses of TABC, which is usable against cholera, 300,000 Vitamin A tablets, and over a million tablets of antibiotic are also being dispatched, War on Want and Save the Children Fund are also sending large quantities of cholera vaccine.

Indications that an international relief effort is about to be allowed in East Pakistan bare been received by the consortium of British charities. Their representative in Dacca, Mr Ian McDonald, has had talks with the Pakistan Government agency there and is confident that the Food and Agricultural Organization will be allowed to sponsor a relief programme inside the country.

Nearly £1m of the consortium's cyclone appeal fund remained unspent when the civil war interrupted the reconstruction programme. Several hundred thousand tons of supplies were stockpiled at Chittagong by various relief agencies before the war.

The three British charities—the other is Christian Aid—accept that it would be almost impossible to differentiate inside East Pakistan between distress caused by the war and distress due to the cyclone.

The Charity Commissioners, who earlier ruled that the money could not legally be used to help war refugees, are understood to have taken the view more recently that the legal responsibility for spending this money must rest with the individual charity.

Within the consortium there is the view that some of the war refugees now across the border in India can trace part of their misfortune back to the cyclone, and that some of the £1m could therefore be properly spent on them, without further reference to the commissioners. This view is not universally accepted by all the constituent charities.

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Our Geneva Correspondent writes: The World Health Organization started arranging an emergency airlift of medical supplies to India today after receiving an appeal from the director-general of health services there for aid to fight the cholera outbreaks.

Officials said that the type of vaccine being sent was for the more virulent classical type of cholera which, together with the milder El Tor variety, had been diagnosed in the camps.

A first consignment of 1,200lb of supplies, being air-freighted tomorrow, will include 500,000 millilitres of vaccine, 75,000 syringes, 300,000 disposable needles, 20 foot-operated jet-injection guns, and 12,000 litres of rehydration fluid.

Other consignments will follow as soon as possible, including large quantities of tetracycline antibiotics for children.

Officials point out that India also has its own facilities for manufacturing vaccine—as do some other countries, among them Pakistan and Egypt—and is asking for additional supplies.

The total value of medical aid so far ordered for shipment by the WHO is about £150,000.

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Our Political Staff write : Mrs Judith Hart, the shadow spokesman on overseas aid, has asked for a meeting with Mr Richard Wood, the Minister for Overseas Development, to discuss refugee relief, Mr Wood has promised to meet her for discussions next Tuesday morning, before Parliament reassembles after the Whit-sun recess.
Hindu population flees, page 4