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BD Diarrhoea

toll may rise

DHAKA: A diarrhoea epidemic has killed nearly 1,600 people in flood-ravaged Bangladesh and the toll is expected to continue rising, local officials said on Sunday.

Chief Physician of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Dr Mohammad Abdus Salam, said the hospital -- the country's only specialised diarrhoea centre -- had only 180 beds but was now handling more than 400 patients a day.

Many had to be turned away without treatment, witnesses said.

Doctors said children were the worst-affected victims -- about 60 percent of the total patients inflow.

"We are facing tremendous pressure," Salam said.

More than 300,000 people were infected with the disease, which has spread because of polluted water and rotten food after floods in July which killed nearly 250 people, the local officials said.

The hospital has erected a makeshift structure with rows of cots to provide treatment to the extra patients.

"We are witnessing an epidemic and an emergency," he said in a statement to the press on Tuesday.

Health officials fear the diarrhoea epidemic might worsen if weather officials are correct in their forecast of another flood later this month.

Doctors in other hospitals said efforts to contain the outbreak were hampered by lack of medicines and clinical facilities.-Reuter