Doctors and health workers struggled to treat thousands of villagers suffering from water-borne diseases in India's east on Thursday, officials said, as the death toll mounted from weeks of flooding in South Asia. Monsoon rains, burst dams and overflowing embankments have unleashed heavy floods in the region this year, killing more than 1,500 people, mostly in India but also in Nepal. Water levels are receding at most places, but the spectre of disease has risen, especially in India's eastern states of Orissa and Bihar where more than five million people have been severely affected by flooding. Officials in Orissa said they had treated nearly 18,000 people in the past four days, most of them suffering from diarrhoea, fever or rashes. Hundreds of them were children who had been forced to drink dirty flood water to survive. “We have also treated people with respiratory tract infections,” Kashinath Nayak, chief medial officer of the worst-hit Kendrapada district, told Reuters. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the Yamuna river was touching its danger mark near the Taj Mahal city of Agra, but officials said there was no danger of the 17th-century monument being flooded. Officials said tens of thousands of people had taken refuge on embankments and highways after their homes were destroyed in flooding from an unlocked dam on the Mahanadi river.
