Monsoon Death Toll Crosses 2,000 In South Asia

Friday, August 10th 2007, 7:30 am

By: News On 6

NEW DELHI (AP) _ India asked doctors to cancel vacations Friday and rushed food and medicine to flooded regions where disease has stricken thousands of people. A wild storm hit Pakistan's largest city, pushing the death toll from a particularly calamitous South Asia monsoon season past 2,000.

Relief workers said there was an acute shortage of clean drinking water and medical supplies parts of northern India, where storms have been heavier than usual this year.

With flooding from two weeks of rains finally receding in northern India, monsoon storms moved west. Heavy winds and rains lashed the Pakistani city of Karachi, destroyed homes and flooding streets. At least 22 bodies were pulled from collapsed homes, said Anwar Kazi, a spokesman for the private relief service Edhi Foundation. Residents waded through waist-deep water in parts of the city of 15 million people, local television showed.

Vital to farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people, the monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's a blessing and a curse: At least 2,090 people have died this year, double the number killed last year. Nearly 600 people have died in the past two weeks alone.

The rainfall has been unevenly distributed across India this year due to unusual monsoon patterns, according to the country's Meteorological Department. While parts of central India received less rain, the north faced stronger storms for longer than usual.

The reprieve in the monsoon rains created ponds of stagnant water in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, and aid workers struggled to stave off a disease epidemic.

In Uttar Pradesh, ``paramedics visiting affected villages don't have adequate supplies of medicines,'' said Ramakant Rai, chief of state's Voluntary Health Association. He said clean drinking water was running low.

Families lined up for aid finally reaching their villages. In one Uttar Pradesh village, a family rowed a makeshift tube raft to a relief center.

Doctors have treated at least 1,500 people in Uttar Pradesh for diarrhea in the past 10 days, said L.B. Prasad, director-general of the state's health services. Rai's group said the scope of the suffering was greater, with more than 22,000 people coming down with waterborne disease.

In neighboring Bihar state, the government canceled vacations for doctors in flood-ravaged districts, said state Health Minister Chandramohan Rai.

Banks in the Bihar also temporarily suspended recovery of loans from people affected by the flooding. Several million children in Bihar are unable to attend class because their schools have been damaged or were being used as shelters, UNICEF said.

The storms have stranded 19 million people in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Nearly 243,000 people were still living in relief camps in India, the Home Ministry said.

Since the start of this year's monsoon, more than 1,550 people have died in India; 226 people have been killed neighboring Bangladesh; 92 in Nepal, and at least 222 in Pakistan, officials said.