Nine-year-old Sandeepa Gharami survived Cyclone Aila, but succumbed in its aftermath. She died on an embankment near Lahiripur on Friday after several days of continuous vomiting and diarrhoea. She received no medical care. Her parents buried her by the river.

A week after the storm, the first signs of a severe outbreak of enteric diseases have emerged on the battered islands of Sunderban. The Indian Express found Sandeepa’s family living on two benches in a local club Monday, surrounded by filth, slush and mud. Her father and five-year-old brother had the same symptoms that she had shown in her last few days.

There were no doctors or medicines. A couple of quacks were selling saline water for Rs 70 a bottle, charging extra for administering the fluid. Some pills sold as anti-diarrhoea medicines were cheaper, but still far beyond the reach of the Gharamis.

After Aila flattened their home in Anandapur village, a three-hour boatride from the block headquarters of Gosaba, the impoverished daily wage-earning family took shelter on the river embankment, the highest point in the village. All drinking water sources were under water, and for the next three-four days they drank from ponds.

“Sandeepa started vomiting and had a running stomach,” said her mother Bina Gharami. The local quack, a man called Gourpada Mondal, prescribed some tablets. “But where could we get the medicines?”

The family decided to move to the Lahiripur jetty embankment, which was more accessible to supplies and had a market close by. “We walked 45 minutes on the embankment, carrying Sandeepa. We stopped at a place where people from other places had also taken shelter,” Bina said.

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