By IANS
Dhaka : Bangladesh has been assured aid worth $142 million by the international community for the relief and rehabilitation of people affected by last week’s Hurricane Sidr after the hurricane toll crossed 3,100.
The government made an appeal for international relief for the second time this year after heavy rains and a storm lashed many of its areas during August-September, causing serious mudslides that led to loss of life and property.
The appeal went out four days after the cyclone struck Bangladesh Thursday night, according to army officials.
“It’s our view that our friends will come forward to assist us at this hour of our need,” Foreign Affairs Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said.
“We’re doing everything we can ourselves, but the magnitude of the calamity has been just too huge,” news agency United News of Bangladesh (UNB) quoted Chowdhury as saying.
The international community, including India, China, Japan, the US, European Union, Germany, World Health Organisation and UNDP have so far assured the hurricane hit country aid worth $142, media reports said.
According to the updated official estimate as of Monday night, the toll stands at 2,753, while the Armed Forces Division puts it at 3,113. Bangladesh Red Crescent Society has said the figure could touch 10,000.
The cyclone has affected four million individuals of a million families in 141 upazilas (sub-districts) in the southern region. Over 300,000 houses have been completely destroyed and over 600,000 houses have been damaged.
The government is also bracing to meet a possible outbreak of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases in the Sidr-affected areas that now suffer from acute shortage of safe water.
“Water-borne and other infectious diseases may spread rapidly in the cyclone affected areas due to lack of safe drinking water, dirty environment and mosquito menace,” Health and Family Welfare Adviser A.S.M. Matiur Rahman said.
Outbreak of diarrhoea, pneumonia, eye soaring, typhoid, hepatitis and skin diseases are now major concerns for the government, New Age newspaper reported Tuesday.
“It would become an epidemic if any of the infectious diseases breaks out in shelter homes crowded with hundreds of homeless people,’ the adviser warned.
Bangladesh lacks adequate infrastructure and trained manpower. Holidays for doctors, nurses and other employees of health complexes have been suspended.
There are 1,571 medical teams working in the affected areas, ministry sources said.
Meanwhile, Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed will curtail his visit to the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government to be held in Kampala, Uganda on Nov 23-25 in view of the situation caused by the cyclone, UNB said.
He is now slated to spend only a day and a half, using it to apprise other Commonwealth leaders of the enormity of the problems caused by the cyclone.