Krishnagar, West Bengal.
June 3
They lay on the cold stone floor, a hundred men, women and children, retelling and shaking, their terrified eyes fixed on the back entrance of the hospital where the corpses were piling up. Cramped in the tiny village hospital, some only half alive, they are all victims of the cholera epidemic sweeping through the refugee camps of West Bengal.

It is not pleasant to see 100 people dying of cholera when one knows that there are huge stocks of medicine in the world which could have saved them or could at least have eased their agony.

With neither mattresses nor blankets they die on the hard floor of this improvised hospital in the south of the Nadia district. A dying baby still clings to its dead mother's body. An old man coughs and dies a foot away from my feet.

A young doctor with tears in his eyes points to the street where thousands of refugees are huddled under umbrellas and on straw mats in the rain. "I only have the equipment and medicine to save a few", he says. "The only thing I can do now is to bring them inside so they don't die in the rain"

It was the same grim story in the northern region of Nadia. The official death toll has risen to 1,700 but officials from West Bengal's health services, who escorted me to the cholera-affected refugee camps near Bethuadahari village, about 90 miles north of Calcutta, claim that as many as 5,000 have died of cholera since last Sunday.

"Many doctors are still playing down the statistics because they feel that they might be held responsible for the outbreak", an official explains. "But I can tell you that we have already hired 15 lorries to transport bodies in the northern towns of Shikarpur and Karimpur."

The town of Karimpur near the border has been hit hardest by the disease. "We are burning them in huge communal graves but we cannot cope with the number of deaths", says the young official. Mr. Rishikesh Choudhury. "The bodies are still lying in the streets and the vultures are eating them. This will spread the epidemic."

His fears are echoed by officials in all parts of the district. The disease has already claimed 200 lives in the huge refugee camp near the town of Kalyani, 40 miles north of Calcutta. You know you are approaching the Kalyani refugee camps before you see them. You can smell them.

An estimated 100,000 Bengalis have been accommodated in these makeshift camps. There is no sanitation nor any permanent shelter and thousands of refugees are crouching under crude straw mats or umbrellas in fields flooded by the monsoon rains.

As the reports of the cholera epidemic spread through the town the local inhabitants are beginning to place handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses as they pass the huge camps.

We drive to the north passing a never-ending stream of refugees on the roads. Some are too tired to walk and are squatting under trees in the rain.. We arrive at the village hospital at Bethuadahari and it is the same story.

The local medical officer, Dr. A. Banerjee, aged 33, and his staff have been overwhelmed by the number of cholera cases. There are about 10,000 refugees in his area of jurisdiction and the death toll is rising steadily.

Dr. Banerjee tells an orderly to take a woman out to the "isolation ward". He explains that the isolation ward is essentially the death house. "Some of the cases have gone away when they have seen other people dying next to them so we have had to take the very bad ones outside to die."

Women and children, most of them in a coma, have been crowded into the isolation ward. On the veranda outside an old man lies weeping as the body of his wife is dragged across the yard to the mortuary.
Continued on page 6, col 7…..

Cholera camp doctors cry out for world help

…..Continued from page 1
Dr. Banerjee says the situation is out of control. "From what I understand, many more people who have not reached medical centres are dying on the roads and in the jungle. We were alarmed today to find suspected cases among the local population. We don't even have time to bury the corpses. We need all kinds of help, medicine, volunteers and equipment.

"The district is already threatened by an epidemic and unless we get help from outside the results will be disastrous."

Dr. Banerjee, who is usually responsible for the medical care of 170,000 people. says that he has had to ignore his normal patients because of the cholera epidemic.

"Patients are coming in every minute but I don't have the equipment or the medicine to help them. We must have outside help immediately. But I must say I am puzzled by the attitude of the World Health Organization. When nothing is wrong they send us pamphlets and all sorts of instructions, but when an epidemic breaks out we don't hear a word from them."

The young doctor says that he urgently needs ambulances, medicine and bottles of saline. "That woman on the floor will die in another few hours because I do not have enough saline. I could have saved her if I had the stuff. Please tell your country to help us."

---

Delhi, June 3.—United States Air Force C130 transport aircraft will begin operating along the East Pakistan border in the next few days ferrying thousands of refugees to new relief camps, authoritative sources reported today.

They said America would provide four of the four-engine airliners with crews in response to a request from the Indian Government to help relieve the overcrowded refugee camps and to take the medicine, needed to counter the cholera outbreak.

A similar request for transport carriers was made to the Soviet Union, the sources added, but there was no immediate word of the Russian response.

Sources at the American Embassy, confirming that the arrival of the aircraft was imminent, said that the United States Government felt India's request was justified since it did not have enough of its own transport aircraft, either military or civilian.

It was also pointed out that an excessive number of Indian Air Force planes in the border region, even for refugee relief missions, might be misinterpreted by Pakistan as a military build-up.

An embassy official said the American decision had already been explained to Pakistan to avoid any misunderstanding of why United States military aircraft would be flying so near to the East Pakistan border.

One of the places where the C130s will land will be at Agartala, the capital of the eastern state of Tripura where the airstrip is only a few yards from the border, within sight of Pakistani troops. To reach Agartala, 200 miles north-east of Calcutta, the transports have to go through a narrow air corridor taking them within 50 miles of the sensitive Tibetan border area-—AP.