বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
Malnutrition claims a considerable number of lives a day in each camp. To counter-net this menace. Operation Lifeline has been inaugurated under the Red Cross Umbrella and supported by Government of India. Each participating voluntary agency retains its own autonomy and identity.
What are the reasons for this acute incidence of marasmus and kwashiorkor? Change of dietary constituents is not the only factor, as the refugees have been living under more severe conditions before coming to Salt Lake camp. In peace time, fish comprised a large part of their diet and now it is unavailable, except for a small quantity which the refugees sell themselves ill the local shops they have constructed along the roads into the camps.
Protein deficiency becomes inevitable. Other factors are dysentery, worm infestations, measles, and chest and skin infections which interfere with the child's appetite and cause loss of weight. Once the child has reached the crucial point of being 60% below his normal standard of weight, there is very little hope of recovery by maternal care alone.
Doug Attwood, Bob Sweeney, Care
Considering the sea of mud that surrounds us it is astonishing to find people actually still washing their saris and dhotis and trying to keep their children slightly clean-often in the largest puddle around us or in a small pond some yards away. They do have some sense of sanitation involved but almost no means of coping with the necessities. From here I look into some of these tent-like structures. I hear the babies crying, I see people sitting there, many of them quit languidly, many of them of course old but still others passing in and out trying to gather water, trying to find the children, really almost nothing left for them to do here. They don'ts know how long they can be here, no-one is able to tell them. They know that they do get rations and they do have some sort of shelter over their heads but from day to day they don't have very much to look forward to.
John Saar, Life Magazine
In the village of Kanthali, a tubby, globe faced man named Nalini Mohan Biswas, welcomed 125 cholera victims into the courtyard of his home when they collapsed while passing through town, Biswas himself was unprotected by a vaccination. Even so, he nursed the stricken refugees so conscientiously that only four died.
But such rare and extraordinary efforts are only pinpoints in a vast tragedy. Narayan Desai, secretary of a national volunteer group, has no doubts about the gravity and explosiveness of the refugee issue: “I see a series of calamities, beginning with huge health problems. I imagine that thousands will die every day."
Anthony Mascarenhas, Journalist
When I visited East Bengal I was also appalled by the extraordinary hostility of non-Bengali officials to the local population.
For example, when I talked about the impending famine to a senior agricultural official, he bluntly told me: “The famine is the result of their acts of sabotage. So let them die. Perhaps then the Bengalis will come of their senses."
