BARMER: Medical teams fanned out across parts of India’s desert state of Rajasthan to check the spread of disease after floods claimed 150 lives in the past week, officials said on Monday. “The flood waters have gone down but the biggest challenge facing us is the spread of disease and seeing this we are giving people medicines and medical teams are (undertaking) testing,” said Digambar Singh, the state’s health minister.
The flash floods, caused by a week of heavy monsoon rains, killed tens of thousands of animals, whose rotting carcasses have raised fears of water-borne diseases, another official said.
Villagers reported seeing dead animals floating in the water and said the stench had become unbearable.
“After the floods, we had reports of fever, skin diseases and eye infections,” said Lalit K. Pawar, the state’s urban development secretary.
Tens of thousands of animals have died so the water is heavily contaminated, Pawar said.
“The teams are putting bleaching powder in the water and we are burying animals,” he added.
He said that 48 medical teams had been sent to the areas affected.
Rescue workers continued to look for bodies and animal carcasses as a central government team examined how to drain water still pooled 18 metres deep in more than a dozen villages, officials said.
State officials have said they expect the human death toll to reach around 300, with more than 100 people still unaccounted for on Monday.
“From 40 kilometres away the bodies have floated here. The smell is very bad and the authorities are not making proper arrangements,” Kana Ram, a resident of Bhadka village, said on news channel NDTV.
The majority of the flood-related deaths occurred in Barmer district, near the border with Pakistan, about 900 kilometres west of New Delhi.
The state’s public works minister, Rajendra Singh Rathore, put Rajasthan’s financial losses at four billion rupees.
In Barmer, which had suffered a drought for the last six years, the rains initially brought cheer to parched villages, but now residents stranded on sand dunes are mourning lost family members and homes.
“For 24 hours I was in the water, my house and everything are drowned. If the (rescue) boat had come half an hour later I wouldn’t have made it,” said Marga Devi of Kawas village, who could see only the top of her flooded home from her vantage point.
Earlier this month, monsoon rains that sweep India from June to September caused flooding in four states.—AFP
