Bangladesh on highest health alert for flood-hit districts: minister

The Bangladeshi government has stepped up emergency healthcare preparations in 11 flood-hit districts to ensure medical services continue uninterrupted, a minister said on Monday.

"Adequate stocks of medicines, saline and antivenom were ready, and additional medical teams would be deployed from the central level if needed," Bangladeshi Health and Family Welfare Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Hossain told a press briefing in Dhaka.

Leave for healthcare workers in the flood-hit districts had been canceled to ensure uninterrupted services, he said, adding that the health ministry is running a round-the-clock control room to coordinate the response and collect field data.

Authorities are coordinating with district administrations, civil surgeons and hospital authorities to monitor the situation, said the minister.

Special instructions have been issued to ensure healthcare for pregnant women, children and remote communities, he said, urging people to take snakebite victims to hospitals, not traditional healers, during floods.

Quoting the latest daily disaster situation report released by the country's Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that three more flood-related deaths were reported in Bangladesh on Monday, raising the toll from the current flooding to 54.

xinhua