Storms, Disease Add to Misery in Bangladesh

Storms and floods ravaging Bangladesh killed at least 90 more people, officials said Friday, as millions faced disease and hunger after last week’s devastating cyclone.

Opposition leader Hasina Wajed accused the government of not doing enough to help and estimated that at least a million people died in the cyclone--eight times the official count.

“This government would have quit by now if it had self-respect,” she told a news conference.

Voluntary agencies said an epidemic of diarrhea had broken out in 16 coastal districts where people were drinking contaminated water.

Bangladesh’s health directorate said diarrhea had killed 951 people in 23 districts in the past two weeks. Most of the deaths, it said, were in cyclone-affected regions.

Storms with 60-m.p.h. winds battered seven towns in northern and eastern Bangladesh Thursday night, destroying hundreds of huts and uprooting trees and electricity pylons.

More than 100,000 people were marooned in the northeastern Sylhet district after floods caused by heavy rains inundated nearly 100 square miles and destroyed houses and crops.

The gales and floods were the latest in a sequence of tragedies that began last week when Bangladesh was pounded by the most powerful cyclone in its 20-year history. At least 125,000 people were killed, by official count.

A tornado killed 50 people in the northern industrial town of Gazipur on Tuesday and eight people died in another storm in northeastern Ghorasal the next day.

Planes arrived in Dhaka on Friday with medicine, food and other supplies for an estimated 4 million people, most suffering from diarrhea and living in the open.

A C-5 Galaxy transport and C-141 cargo plane arrived with nearly 18 tons of relief materials from the U.S. government.

A C-130 cargo plane with 160 bags of rice arrived from Thailand and a Chinese aircraft landed in Dhaka with 25 tons of medicine, food and tents.

Robert Sacks, a doctor from the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, said diarrheal disease is “probably the No. 1 medical problem” facing cyclone survivors.

“At one point, the hospital was overflowing with people and we had to erect tents outside. We were treating 300 to 400 people a day,” said Sacks, adding that many had died.

Another doctor, from the U.N. Children’s Fund, said at least 1.7 million survivors are likely to be affected by diarrheal disease.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said Bangladeshis will have to live with natural calamity.

“It has been a part of our life as it comes every year in one form or another,” she told a rally Thursday.

But she said she expects massive international aid to help overcome the tragedy.

Twenty-six countries have so far pledged emergency aid totaling $202 million, including $106 million from Saudi Arabia.