The garbage in drain water in Nullah's flowing in twin cities are causing environmental pollution, besides posing threats to human health. The residents living near these Nullah's said that these garbage mixed filthy water also increase the threats to the health of the animals and also human being in case of its direct or indirect consumption.

People in the remote areas of the south and south-eastern districts, inundated by tidal surges associated with cyclone Aila on May 25, are still facing acute crisis of drinking water, food and medicine amid an alarming spread of water borne diseases.

Ravik Bhattacharya

Lahiripur (Sunderban Island): Nine-year-old Sandeepa Gharami survived Cyclone Aila, but succumbed in its aftermath. She died on an embankment near Lahiripur on Friday after several days of continuous vomiting and diarrhoea. She received no medical care. Her parents buried her by the river.

KOLKATA, 30 MAY: With cattle and human corpses floating in water bodies in the wake of cyclone Aila, the threat of skin and water-borne enteric diseases and dysentry are looming large in the Sunderbans.

Discussions held on the incidence of dengue at the Health Ministry revealed that the virus had mutated putting paid to all efforts to rid the country of the disease.

Deputy Director General (Public Health) Dr. Palitha Mahipala said the Health Ministry had been hitherto tackling the

Waterborne diseases

Minister for Environment, Hamidullah Jan Afridi Thursday announced that there would be 100 per cent sanitation coverage by 2015, and stressed the need to devise a three pronged strategy to achieve this target.

Tree-munching beetles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and deer ticks that spread Lyme disease are three living signs that climate change is likely to exact a heavy toll on human health.

These pests and others are expanding their ranges in a warming world, which means people who never had to worry about them will have to start. And they are hardly the only health threats from global warming.