Calcutta, June 9
Indian health officials are overwhelmed by the speed of Britain's response to their call for assistance to tight the cholera epidemic which has. so far, claimed the lives of an estimated 6,000 Bengal refugees.

“I want to thank the world for its help and in particular Britain for her prompt response”, said Dr H. Saha, director of health services. West Bengal. He had never expected such a reaction to his call for help through The Times.

“Within 24 hours, volunteers from Oxfam were here with jet injectors. I advised them of the terrible conditions under which they would have to work but they went straight out into the field.”

“I cannot thank everyone enough. I will soon have as much vaccine as the waters in the Bay of Bengal.”

As Dr Saha was speaking, the first of nine Royal Air Force and BOAC chartered aircraft touched down at Calcutta airport loaded with medical equipment for Oxfam workers in the field.

The latest official statistics available indicate, that the epidemic has declined slightly over the last two days though it is still too early to say categorically whether the disease has been contained. Health officials said, however, that the prompt assistance by the international community, and by Britain in particular, would in any event save tens of thousands of lives.

Earlier today Dr Saha had made a modest request for four more jet injectors but when I told him that 15 high speed injectors and 500,000 doses of cholera vaccine would arrive in an RAF VC 10 tomorrow, he said: “I don’t know what to say. This more than meets our hopes”

The number of cholera cases admitted to clinics dropped from 2,833 on Monday to 1,184 yesterday and the death toll similarly declined from 350 to 218. But field workers claim that the death toll is far higher than what officials will admit.

Doctors stationed at village hospitals and clinics also told me yesterday that many hungry refugees were picking up cholera and other diseases because they were eating reeds and hyacinth plants from polluted ponds.

" Many of these people have been living on nothing bur boiled rice and salt for weeks and they are beginning to supplement their diet with plants from polluted ponds.” Dr B. K. Bose, who is supervising a relief clinic near Taki told me.

A quick survey of another small hospital in Taki, where 92 people have died since the epidemic broke out two weeks ago. also shows that overseas aid has not yet filtered down to village level.

Dr D. S. Roy, who is in charge, said: ”1 could have saved many of them if I had had enough saline. I have seen people with sunken eyes recover overnight after they had been given saline but what could I do when supplies ran out. I had to watch 16 people die in one day.”

There are 34 patients in a critical condition, in the tiny 20-bed ward and an equal number of patients recovering on the floor of the outside veranda.

"For the moment things are easing but I need more saline and more transfusion sets,” Dr Roy said.

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Geneva, June 9.—Mr Ismat Kattani. United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, today requested the cooperation of the Food and Agriculture Organization and the League of Red Cross Societies in a large-scale food relief programme for East. Pakistan.

He stopped off in Geneva today on his way back to New York after conferences in Dacca.

Reliable sources said that Mr Kattani believed that he had obtained the “green light” for aid under the ”United Nations umbrella”. According to these sources. Pakistan Government officials did not include any request for medicines in the list of supplies requested for East Pakistan from the United Nations.

The Pakistan officials left the impression, it was understood, that while cases of cholera exist in East Pakistan, they are not on a scale anything like the epidemic prevailing among the refugees who have fled into India. —New York Times News Service.

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New York, June 9.—U Thant, the Secretary-General, proposed today the creation of a United Nations, disaster relief centre to speed and improve international aid in cases of natural emergencies.

He dispatched his recommendations to the Economic and Social Council, which meets in Geneva next month. The proposals will also be studied by the General Assembly at the session which opens here on September 21.
United Nations officials said that U Thant’s suggestions were prepared in the light of the experience gained in recent months from the natural disasters in Turkey. Peru and East Pakistan. —Reuter.

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Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes: Sir Alec Douglas-Home opened yesterday’s Commons debate on the Pakistan situation with a renewed pledge that Britain would not allow the world relief effort to fail for lack of funds.

“We shall offer help with all the generosity in our power as soon as the opportunities arise “, said Sir Alec, who made clear that for the moment it was not a shortage of money that was the real problem.

The £1m given by Britain to the United Nations relief effort had not been "drawn down" very far. Britain was ready to add substantially more.

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the debate was that after the urgency of the pleas from the Labour benches on Tuesday for business to be rearranged for the debate to take place, only four Opposition backbenchers bothered to turn up at the start of Sir Alec’s speech.

Mr Wilson, who had led the plea for a special debate, came in halfway through Sir Alec’s speech and left halfway through the opening speech of Mrs Hart, Labour's spokesman on overseas development. She welcomed the Foreign Secretary’s promises about further aid. but urged that he should name a figure to set an example to other countries and to allay fears that the money would run out.

Mrs Hart spoke of the real threat to international peace that existed in this area and mentioned that ”one of the most superb of the correspondents” reporting from the area. Peter Hazelhurst of The Times, had written about the pressures on Mrs Gandhi. The international community would be unwise to ignore these tensions, she said.

Sir Alec agreed that the Indian Government had exercised great restraint and he was certain this would continue. Otherwise, he warned, the danger of war between Pakistan and India would be very real and would convert what was already a tragedy into a catastrophy.

Indians’ tempers fray, page 7

Parliamentary report, page 8