India cholera death toll soars

[Treyfish]

India cholera death toll soars

Posted 3 hours 22 minutes ago
The death toll from an outbreak of cholera in eastern India has jumped by over 50 per cent in two days to 166, with many more people being treated for the disease, officials said.
Government administrators in the four affected districts in the poverty-stricken state of Orissa supplied the cholera death toll, which stood at 105 on Wednesday.
But the opposition said around 500 people have died from cholera and attacked the Government for not declaring an epidemic.
Officials denied they were facing a cholera epidemic and insisted that the situation was under control.
"We have no epidemic," Orissa health secretary Chiny Basu said in the state capital Bhubaneswar.
The health control room in Bhubaneswar set up to monitor the outbreak of the disease said over 6,000 people were being treated for cholera and dysentery. Authorities could supply no break-up of the figures.
The victims contracted the illness from drinking dirty water and contaminated food, officials said.
More doctors had been dispatched to districts affected by the outbreak of disease, Basu said.
"The administration is taking every possible step to counter cholera," Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said on Wednesday.
The cholera outbreak erupted last week in the districts of Rayagada and Koraput, 500 kilometres south-west of Bhubaneswar, officials said.
It has spread to Kalahandi and Gajapati districts, officials said.
"It is the complacency of the Government that has led to the situation," opposition Congress state leader J.B. Patnaik said, who has called for the Government's resignation. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...section=justin

[Niko]

Re: India cholera death toll soars

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The death toll from an outbreak of cholera and other water-borne stomach diseases in eastern India rose to 197 Friday, with thousands of people still being treated, officials said.


Most of the deaths have been reported in three districts some 500 kilometres (310 miles) southwest of impoverished Orissa state's capital, Bhubaneswar, with Koraput district the worst hit.


"Eighty-five people have died so far due to cholera and other acute water- and food-borne intestinal infections in Koraput," the town's top medical official Rama Chandra Agarwal told AFP, adding that more emergency treatment centres had been opened.


In the adjacent Rayagada district 83 deaths have been reported, while another 29 died in Kalahandi.


But health activists and opposition parties dispute the official figures, saying the real toll is much higher."At least 500 people have died since the outbreak of cholera. It's surprising that the Orissa government still refuses to call it an epidemic," Communist Party of India (CPI) leader A.B. Bardhan told a news conference Thursday.


"It's a grim reminder of the malnutrition that the tribal people are suffering in the inaccessible areas of the affected districts," Bardhan said.


The opposition Congress party has called for a state-wide shutdown Monday to protest the deaths.

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