RAIN FLOODS: death toll spirals as rivers overflow in India, Bangladesh and Nepal and threaten safety of some 21 million people.
Governments and aid agencies are stepping up efforts to help 21 million people affected by the worst floods in memory across India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Some 374 lives have been lost so far.
The United Nations children's fund, Unicef, yesterday said the sheer scale of the problem posed an unprecedented challenge following 20 days of incessant rain resulting in major rivers in the eastern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and northeastern Assam province overflowing their banks.
Many flow into neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal.
"Shelter, access to fresh water, food, emergency medical supplies and basic household items are urgently required - especially given the loss of infrastructure including basic health units and hospitals," Unicef said.
Torrential rain on Saturday compounded the misery of some two million marooned Indian villagers scrambling to find dry land along rail tracks and highways.
Indian air force helicopters dropped food, packets of flour, salt, candles and matches to marooned villagers while army units continued rescue operations.
Save the Children launched an appeal for donations amid warnings of food and medical shortages among 14 million affected people in India and another seven million in Bangladesh.
And, as a relatively rain-free Sunday saw some of the major rivers receding, doctors and paramedics began supplying medicine to people to prevent diarrhoea, skin allergies and other water-borne diseases.
"Our effort is to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic" army doctor S K Gupta said as medical corps personnel treated people in makeshift camps near Gorakhpur town, 250km (155 miles) southeast of Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow.
At least 39 deaths had been reported in Bangladesh and 21 in India over the weekend due to flooding.
This raised Bangladesh's overall death toll to 120 and India's to 169, according to government figures available yesterday.
Another 85 people perished in Nepal where conditions were reported to be improving.
Many accounts were reported by newspapers and television channels of children separated from their families due to swirling flood waters and of elderly people refusing to leave their homes.
One septuagenarian couple and two of their relatives, who declined to leave their village 65km southeast of Lucknow, were crushed to death when their home collapsed on Saturday night.
Meanwhile, Fakhruddin Ahmed, head of Bangladesh's military-backed interim government, visited the northwestern district of Sirajganj at the weekend.
Despite the devastation, Mr Ahmed said the government had enough food and medicine to distribute and foreign assistance was not needed for the moment.
Forty-five-year-old Aleya Begum took shelter on an embankment with more than 50 other families after their homes were washed away in Pabna, 120km north of the capital Dhaka.
"I've lost everything. We need help from the government to survive," Begum said.
Normally low-lying areas around Dhaka remained under neck-deep water and many residents were using boats to travel around.