From Our Correspondent
Delhi, Sept 14
A team of Indian doctors has reported, after visiting camps of refugees from East Bengal, that more than 100,000 infants and preschool children may die if emergency steps are not taken in the next few months.

Fifty per cent of the children aged under five, according to the team, “show moderately severe and advanced stages of protein caloric malnutrition”. The present efforts of “treating only those afflicted I with some infection cannot save the lives of these children”.

The team was sent by the Indian Government to West Bengal after complaints that the daily rations, allotted for children were not reaching them.

The team has confirmed that the rations were badly distributed. It says this has resulted, in severe malnutrition among children and lactating mothers, and this “coupled with the environmental insanitation which exposes them to repeated gastro-intestinal infections, aggravates the situation”.

Meanwhile relief agencies such as Oxfam and War on Want have been persuaded to help to carry out the emergency nutrition therapy and feeding operations under the auspices of the Indian Red Cross.