Posted on 08/05/2007 6:52:41 AM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
(NEW DELHI)-- Every year when the monsoon rains pound South Asia, many of the poor children in Anouradha Bakshi's educational program become too sick from waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and cholera to attend classes.
She fears this year will be far worse, with nearly 20 million people already displaced by severe flooding across northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
"What we'll see now is a lot of illness, especially in the many slum children who don't have a change of sheets or clothes, let alone access to clean drinking and bathing water," said Bakshi, whose nonprofit group Project Why helps families who live in shanties......
Heavy rains have caused massive flooding in northern and central China, the United Kingdom and the United States. Last month Japan suffered its worst typhoon in decades, and in June a cyclone affected 2 million people in Pakistan.
But medical experts say South Asia often faces the most deadly health risks from severe weather because of weak or nonexistent sewer systems, poor access to drinking water and the massive number of people who live in low-lying areas along rivers. Many urban drainage systems are choked with garbage and plastic, and overflow with steaming raw sewage after even light rains.
"I always see so many children coming in with boils on their feet, since they have been forced to bathe in dirty water and they sometimes live very close to flooded garbage dumps," Bakshi said. "There is a larger issue here in that there still is no housing policy for the poor in India, and there is no proper sewage or drainage systems in most of the country or in many parts of South Asia."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A woman wades through a flooded street to collect food in Sirajgonj, about 104 kilometers (65 miles) north of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, Friday, Aug. 3, 2007. Heavy monsoon rains and floods have killed at least 178 people and displaced another 19 million across Bangladesh and much of northern India, officials said Friday. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman)
/s
It’s their infrastucture...
Yep.
And instead of giving India its much needed aid. Bush spent all the money on 'his illegal war' and no bid contracts to Halliburton. (DU-Huffy-KOS post coming soon, maybe already)
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