The yearly floods expose Assam's fragile health care system.
As the plane prepared to land at Dibrugarh on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, Assam looked like an ocean. The mighty river had overflowed. Paddy fields and villages lay submerged as far as the eye could see. Entire communities, along with their livestock, were living perched on bamboo platforms on stilts or changs.
Statistics on Assam's annual floods rarely reveal the true tragedies that engulf the lives of people in this troubled and neglected part of India. As elsewhere, the state has abdicated its responsibility in providing health care and health education to the poor. Elsewhere in India, public philanthropy at least may work to provide some facilities for the poor, but here in India's Northeast they just die quietly.
Embankments built to contain Assam's rivers breach regularly and as the flood waters rise and fall, epidemics of gastroenteritis, malaria and Japanese encephalitis rampage through upper Assam. The state's public health services are incapable of dealing with the situation. Added to the absence of basic life-saving drugs, is a general ignorance on all health matters.