Calcutta, May 31
Indian health authorities made an urgent appeal for international assistance today as Government doctors announced that an uncontrollable epidemic of cholera has broken out among the millions of Bengali refugees who have crossed into India from East Pakistan.

An unknown number of people have already died of cholera, thousands are collapsing, with disease every day and doctors suspect that tens of thousands of Bengalis who are crossing the frontier every hour are already affected by the disease.

Dr. H. Saha, director of health for West Bengal told me today that the epidemic had broken out on a massive scale in the Nadia district of West Bengal, where more than half a million refugees are living in the open and in overcrowded refugee camps near the border.

"Any number of bodies can be seen on the roadside on both the Indian and Pakistan side of the border. We have managed until now to stamp out the disease in many other areas but it is now uncontrollable in Nadia and we have had to call in the Army." Dr. Saha said.

According to the official record 350 persons have died of cholera in the camps over the weekend. Another 5,000 collapsed yesterday but doctors believe that thousands of other victims have not been brought to medical centres for treatment.

Drinking water in the area has already been polluted and sanitation is non-existent.

Dr- Saha said that the disease was originally carried over the border by refugees from East Pakistan. He believes that an epidemic is spreading rapidly through East Bengal and that almost all the refugees who crossed into India in the past few days have been affected by the disease.

If the reports received by Dr. Saha are correct and an uncontrollable epidemic is spreading in East Bengal one can only shudder at the thought of the consequences. Most of the doctors in the affected areas have fled into India, health services are non-existent and it would seem that nothing can check the disease.

West Bengal health services have also been stretched to breaking point by the sudden influx of four million refugees, and state health authorities are worried that the disease will spread among the millions of people living near the border. Dr. Saha said that he is already beginning to panic. The epidemic is spreading rapidly and I am worried that it will soon affect our own people.

"I have just been told that a five-mile long procession of refugees who are from the affected areas are crossing the border at one point. Another huge column is marching towards Calcutta. We will have to cordon them off and inoculate them first. God help us if someone carries the disease into the city."

Dr. Saha said that the impending disaster can only be averted by international intervention. "I have a thousand doctors working day and night but it is impossible to inoculate the vast numbers of people who are crossing the frontier at almost every point of a 700-mile front." he said.

Dr. Z. Abedin, West Bengal Minister for Health, made an urgent appeal for international assistance later today, saying that medicines in Government stores and in private markets were almost exhausted.

They needed 10,000 bottles of saline a day but were receiving only 800. Dr. Abedin also estimated that the Government urgently needs three million cholera vaccines, two million TABC vaccines, 100,000 bottles of saline, 25-000 molar lactates, one million oxytetracycline capsules, 100,000 packets of cotton, 70,000 feet of bandages and gauze and 10,000 doses of anti-diphtheria serum.

Dr. Abedin appealed for doctors and medical volunteers from all over the world to go to West Bengal. "We also urgently need vehicles and mobile medical centres, American jet injectors and their vaccine containers, baby food and tarpaulins."

The Minister added that up to now India has done everything to save the refugees and that in view of the magnitude of the problem international assistance has been insignificant.

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Delhi- May 31.—Mr. Swaran Singh, the Indian Foreign Minister, will visit Washington, Moscow, London and Paris in the next two weeks to impress upon world leaders " at the highest levels the urgency and dangerous potentialities" of having four million East Pakistan refugees in India, sources close to the Foreign Ministry said today.— AP.
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