Survivors are fighting each other for tortilla flour and bottles of pure water brought in by helicopter. The people in Bangladesh have experienced the most extensive flooding this century. Twenty million folk have been left homeless. The water supply is contaminated. Children are succumbing to diarrhea, cholera and dehydration.
Authorities fear the spread of malaria and dengue fever, for which there is no vaccine.
Desperate shortages of food and medicine threaten the health and ultimately the lives of survivors. In the Indian State of West Bengal more than 200,000 people suffer from skin lesions caused by arsenic contaminated water. An estimated five million people living on the food plain of the Ganges are exposed to this contaminated water. This is the largest mass poisoning in the world, and it is human assisted. Since 1962 when the first tube well was built and water for crops and drinking gushed forth the underground water level began to drop.