Desperate survivors of western India's earthquake sought food, shelter and medicine yesterday amid a growing threat of disease from thousands of putrefying bodies.
"In such situations, there is a threat of epidemic because lots of bodies are still lying under the debris," said Mr Haren Pandya, home minister of the worst-affected Gujarat state.
The overall death toll from the quake, India's worst in five decades, has been placed between 20,000 and 100,000.
Mr Pandya said special teams, headed by the state health director, had been sent to the Kutch region to distribute water-purifying tablets, sprinkle disinfectant and spray deodorant on debris containing human remains.
Environmentalists said a shortage of wood for cremating the dead had left half-charred bodies strewn around the disaster-stricken areas. The absence of drainage and sanitation further aggravated fears of waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea, gastroenteritis and cholera breaking out around the town of Bhuj, headquarters of the Kutch district. Vultures, a threatened species in India, have reappeared in hundreds over Kutch, sharing the skies with aircraft and helicopters flying in relief to the region. Whenever army bulldozers clear rubble away and people rush to try and salvage some of their belongings, vultures swoop down and begin pecking at the exposed, putrefying bodies.
"God and Sarkar (government) have abandoned us," said Mr Ramji Jhala of Surendernagar, who lost his wife and has been living in the open with two small children ever since.
Other earthquake victims in the worst-hit villages and towns surrounding Bhuj say the government, slowed down by centralised thinking and officials quarrelling over jurisdiction, has all but deserted them. Daily they see scores of trucks loaded with food and medicine bypass their area on the way to Bhuj, where there is a glut of supplies, much of it dumped on the roadside as relief efforts continue to be misdirected.
Harried volunteers admit there was little, if any, co-ordination between officers in charge of relief simply because there were too many of them.
"When so many people are involved, co-ordination is the first victim," one official said.
The Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Trevor Morrow, has expressed his "distress" at the earthquake in Gujarat. In a letter to be read in all Presbyterian churches on Sunday, he is urging prayerful and practical action. The Presbyterian Church has sent £10,000 in aid and is asking for special offerings in churches on coming Sundays.
