The number of diarrhoea patients is soaring in the flood-affected Feni and Noakhali districts amid a crisis of hospital beds and lack of safe drinking water as the floodwater started receding.
In Feni, most of the diarrhoea patients are children while in hospitals many nurses have been found to suffer from the water-borne disease.
A disaster management and relief ministry daily flood situation report issued on Sunday showed that the number of marooned people in the 11 affected districts increased by 8,057 to 7,05,052 on the day from 6,96,995 on Saturday.聽
Death toll in the flash floods in these districts remained static at 59 as no new deaths were reported on Sunday. The highest, 23, number of people died in Feni.
Flood-affected people stranded in remote localities desperately wait for relief and medical support amid a situation of complete breakdown of communications system.
The flood has left a trail of destruction in agricultural fields and fish farms, households, highways and roads, educational institutions and other infrastructure in these districts.
The floods have displaced around five lakh people over 3.52 lakh of whom are still living in 3,870 flood shelters across the affected districts of eastern, south-eastern and north-eastern Bangladesh.
抖阴精品 correspondent in Feni reported that all the hospitals and clinics in the district were flooded with diarrhoea patients with the physicians and nurses struggling to manage so many patients.聽
A total of 122 diarrhoea patients, 90 per cent of them children, were admitted to different upzila hospitals
in 24 hours between Saturday morning and Sunday morning.
According to the Feni 250-bed general hospital authorities, till Friday it had total 468 patients including 156 suffering from diarrhoea.
In the hospital, besides the patients from outside, the nurses were also getting infected by diarrhoea.聽
Md Sumon, brought his two-month old son Russell from Phulgazi to the hospital, said on Sunday that they went to the shelter on August 21 where his son was infected with diarrhoea.
Hospital resident medical officer Asif Iqbal said that they were struggling to manage so many diarrhoea patients particularly because聽 they had only 18 diarrhoea beds.聽
The hospital service supervisor Momena Begum said that some of their nurses could not join work due to floodwater.
鈥楽ome of our nurses also got diarrhoea but we keep working,鈥� she added.
District civil surgeon Md Shihab Uddin said on Sunday that the pressure of diarrhoea patients was almost overwhelming in the district during the post-flood period.
鈥楢ll hospitals in the district are having patients beyond their capacity,鈥� he said, adding that there was no crisis of saline including oral saline.
Reportedly the most affected upazilas in the district are Phulgazi and Porshuram.
In Phulgazi, vehicular movement on the Notun Munshirhat-Jagatpur-Amzadhaat road was entirely suspended for the past 13 days as it broke at different points in the flood.
In Porshuram, the road along the Porshuram Bazar-Uttar Kaoke village in Mirzanagar union was heavily damaged.
Officials at the Feni deputy commissioner office said that the recent flood caused an estimated damage of Tk 140.48 crore to the highways and roads in the district.
抖阴精品 correspondent in Noakhali reported that patients with diarrhoea and snake bites were increasing in the hospitals as the floodwater was receding in the district.
Noakhali general hospital resident physician Syed Mohiuddin said that 116 diarrhoea patients and 18 patents with snake bites were admitted to the hospital in 24 hours from Friday morning to Saturday morning.聽聽
Noakhali deputy commissioner Dewan Mahbubur Rahman said that people started returning home from 1,269 shelters as the water was receding.
鈥楢round half of the tube-wells in the district were still under water triggering a crisis of safe drinking water,鈥� he said and added that they were providing water purification tablets and oral saline to the people.聽
Bangladesh Water Development Board鈥檚 Noakhali office executive engineer Munshi Ameer Faisal said that following no rainfall in the past three days in the district the level of water decreased by 1.5cm.
The rate of fall in water level is slow as the district canals and drains were occupied with waste, he added.
抖阴精品 correspondent in Cumilla reported that in Cumilla Medical College Hospital at least 11 patients were passing days in agony as they did not have any knowledge about the whereabouts of their relatives.
Of them a woman was found with a fractured limb, pain in left leg and left eye, and an old man was seen shivering in cold next to her.
Hospital director Sheikh Fazle Rabi said that they would take decision regarding providing rooms and treatment for these unidentified patients soon.
On Sunday, meanwhile, under the banner of Bandhu Forum Cumilla a group of friends in their 50s and 60s were seen travelling with six experienced physicians to provide free health care and medicines to the flood-affected people near Krishnapur Bridge on the Cumilla-Noakhali regional highway under Laksham upazila.
According to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, all rivers of the country were flowing below the danger level on the day.
Bir Protik Faruk E Azam, the adviser to the liberation war affairs and disaster management ministries, said that it was unprecedented that the entire country stood united to work together for the flood-affected people, said a press release issued by the ministry on Sunday.
While chairing an opinion sharing at the Feni deputy commissioner office, he also said that the flood-affected people would be prioritised in providing assistance.