Calcutta, June 7
While tens of thousands of East Bengal refugees continued to cross the frontier into the overcrowded border regions of India today health officials in Calcutta announced that the mortality rate of cholera victims is rising.

"We just don't have enough saline", an official said.

At the same time the commissioner for refugee rehabilitation in West Bengal, Mr B. B. Mandal, said that an estimated 4,100,000 East Bengalis have moved into the province so far. This would mean that more than five million refugees have now crossed the frontier into the three States of West Bengal, Assam in the north and into Tripura.

Mr Mandal told me that according to latest available statistics more than 2,600,000 people have been accommodated in reception centres and another 1,500,000 people are living on the roads and in the jungles. Mr Mandal says that the daily influx of about 100,000 had dropped to 30,000 during the past two days but he believes that the number will soon rise again.

"I will have to prepare for an even greater influx if the reports we have received are correct", he said. “From what I can gather the influx decreased over the weekend because of rain. People on the other side of the border have probably stopped marching because of the rain. We have heard that other columns of about 300,000 people are approaching the border."

In view of the increasing number of Hindus who are being driven out of East Pakistan by Muslims, Mr. Mandal said that the administration had been alerted in case stories of atrocities spark off religious strife between local Hindus and Muslims.

We are trying to disperse the refugees to huge camps which are being built on high lands away from the border, about 80 miles west of Calcutta. We intend to move the first batch of about 50,000 people shortly. But this is just a drop in the ocean and the problems are enormous."

All the refugees would have to be inoculated against cholera before they were moved and this would delay the dispersal plans. A doctor can inoculate about 500 patients a day and the only four jet inoculators available in the state were rushed to the cholera-infected region in Nadia today.

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Delhi, June 7— Mr. Shankar Uma Shankar, the Indian Health Minister, told Parliament today that the central government's information was that 1,250 refugees had died in the cholera epidemic up to June 4, and that 9,500 were in hospital with the disease.

Highly informed sources in Calcutta told Reuter two days ago that the death toll was about 8,000. Government health officials said they had no precise figures, but agreed it could be as high as 8,000.

Calcutta newspapers, quoting official sources, reported that about 4,000 people had died of cholera in the past 15 days in Nadia and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal alone.

Mr Dikshit, who was speaking during a special debate in Parliament on the cholera outbreak, said 2,722,561 refugees were housed in camps in the states of West Bengal, Assam and Bihar, and the territories of Meghalaya and Tripura. On June 4, another 2,015,493 were outside camps, mainly sleeping in the open.

He said 1,500 tube wells were being sunk to meet the pressing need for safe drinking water in the refugee camps.

Malnutrition as well as cholera was taking a heavy toll of lives. A majority of the refugees were "arriving in a condition of exhaustion caused by malnutrition", the Minister said.—Reuter and AP.

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Our Geneva Correspondent writes :
The World Health Organization announced today that the British Government is coming to its aid by sending two RAF transports to pick up medical supplies for cholera victims in India; 9 tons on a Hercules calling here on Wednesday and a further 14 tons with a VC10 due here on Friday.

Saline rehydration fluid will be the main item in both consignments. This intervention by the RAF will enable WHO to clear the rising backlog of supplies that have been accumulating here since Saturday morning, confronting officials with a logistics problem which, considering the gravity of the situation, should have been avoided.

The fact is that in three days only 2 1/2 tons of supplies have left Geneva, out of almost 17 tons available for dispatch from Saturday morning onwards. It is to be regretted that the United Nations relief agencies — acting in the present instance under the aegis of the United Nations Refugee Office — did not themselves charter a cargo aircraft for quick delivery of a more substantial consignment.

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Stewart Harris writes from Canberra:
The Australian Government is expected to authorize tomorrow a big increase in the $A500,000 (£232,500) worth of aid for India which was announced 10 days ago and has been angrily, criticized as inadequate.

"Asia is worth more than a Qantas hoax" was the front page headline today in the National Times; a serious weekly publication which also had a savage cartoon on the subject. The paper reminded its readers that $A500,000 was the ransom paid recently by Qantas, the Government airline, to save comparatively few passengers on board one of its Boeings and that $A500,000 would keep Australia's forces in Vietnam for barely four days.

"How involved is opulent Austraiia with the welfare of neighbouring Asian people" the paper asked. It pointed out that the British Government was giving four times as much to help refugees from East Pakistan.

Mr David Scott, a leader of Community Aid Abroad, which organizes voluntary relief, said Australia should treat the refugee crisis as seriously as it professed to treat the invasion of an Asian neighbour by an armed force.

Austcare, a fund-raising body for 15 organizations, including the Australian Council of Churches, has called on Mr McMahon, the Prime Minister, to open a national campaign and to make gifts tax-deductible.

Mr Gough Whitlam, the Leader of the Opposition, said at the weekend: "The delay, confusion and pitiful inadequacy of Australian aid to Pakistani refugees once again points to the need for an Australian national plan to mobilize and rationalize Australian aid in international disasters and emergencies."

Much of the criticism has centred on the fact that 370,000 doses of cholera, typhoid and typhus vaccine which were ready a week ago will not be leaving for Calcutta until tomorrow evening on board a chartered Quantas Boeing. Some 300,000 more doses are being prepared at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne.

Mr Leslie Bury, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, said last night that the Indian Government had told the Australian Government only three days ago that vaccine and shelter were the things most needed. He added that Australia had been told only that day what kind of vaccine was wanted.

However, the fact remains that both kinds of anti-cholera vaccine — the classic kind that was asked for and the El-Tor variety — will be sent tomorrow.

The first request for vaccine was made by the Indian High Commissioner in Canberra on May 17, but it was argued by government sources here today that India did not at that time regard vaccine at a priority requirement.