Re: Gujarat: Dengue/Chikungunya/Malaria Outbreaks
QUETTA: Thousands of families trapped in flood-affected areas of Jaffarabad district are yet to be rescued. They are facing an acute shortage of food, drinking water and medicines.
Although the army has rescued hundreds of people, a large number of families are still stranded in the flooded areas and along the Khirthar canal.
The death toll in Jaffarabad rose to 50 on Tuesday. Fifteen of them died of gastroenteritis and other diseases and the others were swept away by flood torrents.
?Yes, so far 50 people have died in Jaffarabad,? Nasirabad Division Commissioner Nasibullah Bazai told Dawn, adding that a large number of people were still stranded in different areas. The administration, with the help of the army and Frontier Corps, he said, was trying to rescue them.
?But we need more helicopters and boats.? Breaches in Saifullah Magsi canal have released torrents of water which have inundated Gandakha town and adjoining areas.
Officials said the army and local administration were trying to rescue people stranded in the town. But there have been complaints that no helicopter or boat has been to Gandakha for two days and people there are starving.
Like Gandakha, Dera Allahyar, Rojhan Jamali and Sohbatpur are under eight to ten feet of water. Irrigation officials and local people succeeded on Tuesday in changing the course of water from Jhal Magsi to its natural channels in Sindh. The town has already been evacuated.
?Jhal Magsi is now safe,? officials said, adding that the floodwater was now moving to Ghari Khairo, Shahdadkot and Garhi Yasin on the Sindh-Balochistan border.
However, Kot Magsi and many of its villages are still under water. A number of rice mills have been inundated and rice crop in Usta Mohammad has been destroyed.
Health officials said that hundreds of cases of gastroenteritis, sink diseases, eye infections and other waterborne diseases had been reported from flood-stricken towns and villages and relief camps in Dera Murad Jamali, Sibi, Dhadar and Quetta. Four people, a woman and a child among them, died in Dera Allahyar and Sohbatpur on Monday.
The officials said that there was an acute shortage of medicines in hospitals and medical camps in the district. A large number of patients are being treated in hospitals in Dera Murad Jamali, Sibi and Quetta.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chairman of the Senate Mir Jan Mohammad Khan Jamali has warned that hundreds of thousands of people stranded in areas of Jaffarabad district will die of hunger and diseases if they are not rescued immediately.
?They are living in the open and facing hunger, thirst and different diseases,? he told Dawn here on Tuesday.
?Affected families have not been receiving food and drinking water for 10 days,? Mr Jamali said, adding that a large number of people had fallen sick because of consuming contaminated water.
He said the government and the army should immediately launch a rescue operation to avert further tragedy.
Mr Jamali severely criticised the local administration and said there was no civil administration in Dear Allahyar, Rojhan Jamali and Usta Mohammad. ?Officials of the administration fled the towns after issuing evacuation warnings.?
He said the Balochistan government should set up a base camp in Nasirabad to monitor and accelerate relief operation and the army should provide more helicopters for rescuing people.
Mr Jamali, a former chief minister, suggested that the provincial government should divert its development and non-development expenditures to relief and rehabilitation work in the flood-hit areas.
He said he had written a letter to Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry requesting him to take sue motu notice of the breach made in the Tori embankment which had inundated Jaffarabad. He said the breach had displaced four million people in Sindh and one million in Balochistan.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...s-trapped-in-jaffarabad-yet-to-be-rescued-580
