The Deadly Pattern

They call it Olaotha, and pray to the goddess Ma Olaichandi to keep it away. But each year the people of Calcutta know that before the reviving monsoon rains arrive some time in June, the infection will sweep through their steaming and fetid streets, sometimes killing as many as half of those it touches. Even for a city stamped by the World Health Organization as the "worst cholera epidemic area in the world," this year's outbreak has been especially bad. At one point the Nilratan Sarkar hospital, which specializes in treating the disease, was admitting a new patient every four minutes, the highest admission rate the hospital has known in 20 years.

All day, vans equipped with loudspeakers drive through the city begging people to get inoculated. In narrow alleys drummers parade like town criers, carrying the same message. But as in every year, all these efforts have come too late. Though 400 inoculators have been at work since November, they reached only 300,000 out of 4,000,000 people in five months. One reason: the money for the necessary hypodermic syringes just never showed up. When the epidemic struck in earnest, five of the city's 22 ambulances had been condemned as useless, and ten more were under repair. Only one driver was on duty at a time to answer calls for help.

Everyone knows that Calcutta's water system is precariously close to collapse, but it has not been overhauled since 1926. Sewage invariably seeps into the drinking water, carrying possible death to every tap. In spite of a belated garbage-collecting campaign, piles of refuse still lie festering along Calcutta's winding "gullies," and on street after street, vendors of rotting food still hawk their fly-infested wares. In the teeming bus tees (slums), where people drink out of the same slimy ponds they wash in, the disease spreads relentlessly from hut to hut, bringing with it its agonizing retching and diarrhea. In one week alone nearly 1,000 people died--yet India's government continues to be too little and too late with help. Said one bitter physician after ten hours with his vomiting patients: "We don't mind hard work if it is worthwhile. But after a time the epidemic will subside only to recur the same time next year, and the pattern it will follow will be identical and without any improvement."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.