The devastating monsoon floods that killed thousands and displaced millions in northern India and Bangladesh over the last few weeks claimed at least another 40 lives today, officials said.
As the flood subsided, doctors blamed a lack of access to basic medication and ignorance of how to treat the waterborne diseases that followed the deluge, saying many of these deaths were easily preventable.
A special hospital in Dhaka that treats diarrhoeal diseases has been visited by around 1,000 people a day since the floods, compared with 150 a day before the emergency, according to Alejandro Cravioto, executive director of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research which runs the hospital.
Most of the cases occur because people do not have clean drinking water, instead drinking from stagnant pools left behind by the flood waters or from wells contaminated by filth washed in by the deluge.
To cope with the influx, tents were strung between palm trees on the hospital grounds. Inside, makeshift beds covered with plastic sheets were set up in rows as health workers went from patient to patient, giving them rehydrating solutions and putting cool water on their foreheads to bring down fever.
In India, as the waters receded so has public interest, with most national television and newspapers making no mention of the floods today.
However, doctors still struggled to contain the diseases of the aftermath. In Uttar Pradesh, "paramedics visiting affected villages don't have adequate supplies of medicines," said Ramakant Rai, head of the Voluntary Health Association.
He said clean drinking water was running low.
Doctors have treated at least 1,500 people in Uttar Pradesh for diarrhoea in the past 10 days, according to LB 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 contracting waterborne diseases.
In neighbouring Bihar state, the government cancelled holidays for doctors in flood-ravaged districts, health minister Chandramohan Rai said.