Chhattisgarh airlifting doctors to diarrhoea-hit areas

RAIPUR - The Chhattisgarh government has started airlifting doctors by choppers to tribal belts in Bijapur and Dantewada districts where dozens of people have died due to diarrhoea, cholera and other diseases in the past few months, a minister said Saturday.

“We are receiving reports regularly about deaths of poor tribals in the interiors of Bijapur and Dantewada districts due to diarrhoea and cholera. We are rushing doctors by choppers to the affected areas,” Health Minister Amar Agrawal told IANS.

He said several villages in these two districts, the worst-hit by Maoist militancy for the past three decades, were reeling under diarrhoea and cholera for the last three months.

Agrawal said doctors will be sent by choppers from Jagdalpur town, headquarters of Bastar region, and if required more doctors will be airlifted from Raipur.

An official at the Directorate of Health Services here said the situation was alarming in Basaguda and neighbouring areas of Bijapur district where around 60 deaths have been reported since March.

The official said the toll could be much higher. The areas are Maoist-hit and local authorities are afraid of visiting them to collect actual figures.

Kawasi Lakhma, Congress legislator from Konta seat of Dantewada district, told IANS: “Dozens of forested villages in my constituency are in the grip of diarrhoea since March. These villages are largely cut off by road and residents have no option but to use water stored in ditches for drinking purposes. The government seems to have left these people to die.”