AFP/Kathmandu
The death toll from landslides and flooding in Nepal has risen to 101 after rescuers found four more bodies, officials said yesterday, as they battled to prevent a cholera outbreak.
Another 126 people are missing after torrential rain last week triggered multiple landslides and flooding, devastating entire villages, stranding thousands and damaging roads across the country’s western plains.
As the weather cleared on Sunday after three days of incessant rain, the government deployed more than 3,400 workers and four helicopters to rescue stranded people and deliver emergency supplies, said Jhankanath Dhakal, chief of Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Centre.
“We have found three more bodies this morning, bringing the total death toll to 101,” Dhakal said, adding that another body had been recovered overnight.
In the worst-hit districts of Surkhet, Bardiya and Dang, officials scrambled to provide clean drinking water kits to distraught villagers to try to avert a possible cholera outbreak.
“We have diagnosed a few cases displaying symptoms of cholera,” said Tulashi Prasad Dahal, who is co-ordinating the health ministry’s efforts to prevent an epidemic.
“People suffering from fever, dysentery, diarrhoea are being treated at nearby health posts: the problems arose because of impure drinking water and food,” Dahal said.
Cholera, a potentially deadly disease which causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and dehydration, is contracted by consuming food or water contaminated by human faeces.
A Nepalese family collect a bag of grains from their damaged house after floods in the Tharu village of Hatipur in Surkhet district, some 400km west o
