In Aila’s wake,saline for Rs 70 a bottle,lives are much cheaper

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.

Here — at the Luxbagan market jetty — the family got some chira from an NGO. But drinking water continued to be scarce. Lahiripur was as bad as Anandapur,said Sandeepa’s father Gobinda Gharami. On one side of the embankment,the river stretched up to the horizon; on the other side,innumerable carcasses lay rotting,by the roadside,in ponds.

As Sandeepa sank,the local village panchayat representative,Ashok Mondal,told the family he was helpless. “You can see the situation for yourself. No relief has come,no government official,” he told the Gharamis. When Sandeepa died,Mondal helped them find space on the riverbank to bury her.

Like in Anandapur,quacks are ruling in Lahiripur too. In the absence of government agencies,‘agents’ are supplying bottles of saline for Rs 70 each. A man who identified himself as Gopinath Mondal told this paper he has been treating 25-30 patients every day. “I am an allopathy practitioner but I have no degree,” he said. “Enteric diseases are breaking out all around.”

The Express found the tiny,one-room Lahiripur sub-primary health centre locked. The government-appointed sebika (nurse) could not be traced. She is likely to have left following the cyclone,people said.

Gosaba Block Development Officer Amiya Bhusan Chakrabarty said he had no official information on deaths from enteric disease. Cases like Sandeepa’s,where the body had been buried,would not count,he said. “As of now,we have 555 cases of enteric attacks in Gosaba block but no deaths,” Chakrabarty added.