106 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ৫০। ঘৃণ্য হত্যাকান্ড নিউইয়র্ক টাইমস ২১ জুন, ১৯৭১ NEWSWEEK, JUNE 21, 1971 A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE The flood of Bengali refugees from East Pakistan into India began to subside last week, but the battle being waged against the cholera epidemic they brought with them still went on. More than 5,000 refugees already had died of cholera; at the peak of the epidemic, gravediggers became so exhausted that they could not work, and the supply of wood for burning bodies in the traditional Hindu way was completely used up. Although chartered planes arrived daily bringing shipments of food, hospital equipment and medicines, India still had received barely one-tenth of the $200 million in foreign aid that it needs to care for the estimated 5 million refugees. "What was claimed to be the internal problem of Pakistan," India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi told a deeply concerned Parliament in New Delhi last week, "has now become an internal problem for India." For all the disheartening statistics, however, India's medical service is performing impressively. "I cannot say that the epidemic is diminishing,' says R. N. Gupta, chief social-welfare officer at the Krishnanagar hospital in Nadia, among the hardest-hit provinces. "We still get from SO to 100 cases every day. The difference is that, this week we are able to get almost everyone into the hospital for treatment. Last week, the numbers were so great that many people died on the road before they reached us." But although the roads in Nadia are now almost clear of cholera victims, the hospitals still teem with helpless, retching patients. One treatment center, run by a Catholic nursing order, the Sisters of Mary. Immaculate, was built recently as a maternity hospital; it was opened prematurely two weeks ago to care for cholera cases and has yet to admit its first expectant mother. The building's corridors are lined with small children lying on cots and bottles suspended above them drip a life-giving saline solution into their gaunt bodies, "The effect is quite remarkable," cabled Newsweek's Tony Clifton last week. "They literally have life, pumped back into them, and you can see them gradually gaining strength as the bottle empties." Some of the patients arc beyond any help at all. But by working almost around the clock, the hospital's beleaguered staff of two doctors and eight nurses has so far managed to save all but eighteen of the first 425 cholera cases to be admitted. "We send our ambulances out to pick people off the roads," explains Sister Immaculate, the plump, thirtieth doctor who runs the hospital. "Some of them have been lying out in the mud and rain and are completely collapsed. Yet unless they are literally on the point of death we can cure most of them. That girl" she adds pointing to a peacefully sleeping teen-ager, "was brought in with no pulse and no sign of breathing. We poured saline solution into her, and now she is all right. Some of these people need a gallon of fluid before they recover, but with proper care, they can leave the hospital in two or three days." The treatment only works because of the dedication of the doctors and nurses. We are with them all the time," says Sister Immaculate, "and we spend a lot of money on each one -anything up to 60 rupees ($ 7) per person."
