A severe warning about worsening health and sanitation conditions in the refugee camps of West Bengal was given in London yesterday by Mr James Howard, a senior member of Oxfam.

Mr Howard returned to Britain on Monday after a week spent touring the nine refugee camps in the Barasat area.

“It is the public health situation which is now causing us most alarm”, he said. “To have such a concentration of people is a sitting duck for typhus, and typhoid is inevitable

‘‘When it starts to rain this month it will be unbelievably hard to maintain the health of the people. Many of them are already paddling around in their own muck —the extent of the dysentery is unbelievable.”

A former Oxfam field director in western Asia, Mr. Howard spoke emotionally about the “diabolical ” pressures that were forcing people to flee from East Pakistan. “We suspect that these come from the Pakistan Army and from civilians armed by that army”, he said.

If the pressure continued there was a very real danger of “three or four” million more refugees flooding over the border into the already overcrowded camps in India.

Oxfam announced that it had already spent £200,000 helping the refugees in West Bengal. Yesterday the charity launched a new campaign to try to persuade British women’s organizations to provide saris for Bengali women.

An Oxfam official explained: " Many of the women arrive over the border in nothing but the sari they stand up in. To try and retain a semblance of dignity they are washing these in filthy and polluted water and then putting them back on again wet,”