By Kamil Zaheer
BOCHAHA, India, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Millions of malnourished Indian children are vulnerable to disease after South Asia's worst floods in years, officials and aid groups said on Wednesday, calling for urgent assistance.
Hundreds of UNICEF workers rushed to immunise and supply rehydration fluid sachets to children in the worst-hit and impoverished eastern state of Bihar, where millions are stranded on embankments or living in primitive shelters on highways.
They are exposed to sweltering temperatures, sudden downpours and filthy conditions, making them sitting ducks for infections, aid workers said. Hundreds of cases of diarrhoea are already being reported among children.
The latest bout of monsoon flooding which began about three weeks ago is said to be the worst in living memory in parts of Bihar. It has affected about 30 million people across India, 10 million of them in densely populated Bihar alone.
Another 20 million people in neighbouring Bangladesh are coping with flood waters that have swamped more than half of the low-lying, riverine nation.
In Bihar, children were seen running down embankments to grab food sacks dropped by occasional helicopter sorties. But they lost out to the adults and often returned empty-handed and bewildered as the aircraft pulls away.
"In the big scramble for relief, kids and women are not prioritised and we need to focus on them, especially where malnutrition is high," said Marzio Babille, head of health for UNICEF in India.
Five-year-old Kanti Kumari sat outside a makeshift shelter of bamboo canes and a black plastic sheet and wished she could go back to her sturdier thatched home, seen submerged in the distance in Bochaha village. "My ear hurts," said the skinny girl whose face was smudged with dirt. "I feel hungry often."
Her mother Sheila Devi said no doctor or health worker had visited her family of six daughters and rickshaw-puller husband, despite the fact they lived by the side of a pot-holed national highway where trucks regularly ply.
Neither has the family received food, and school is not even an option.
"They barely can get anything to eat. How can we even think of school," said Devi, holding her two-month old baby whose face was marked by rashes.
"ENDLESS WAIT FOR HELP"
About 540 people have been killed in the floods, including 192 in Bangladesh which reported 28 new deaths on Wednesday, mostly by drowning, disease and snakebites,
More than 50,000 people were suffering from diarrhoea in the flood-hit districts of Bangladesh and many more were sick with other waterborne diseases, authorities said. More than 400,000 people had taken shelter in relief centres.
"We hate to sit idle or rely on doles for a living. But the cruel floods have made us jobless," said Fahima Begum of Jasaldia village, about an hour by road from the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
Her rickshaw-puller husband has been without work for 10 days since their village was inundated, pushing them to the brink of of starvation.
"I am trying to keep my children alive, at least," Fahima said as her son and two daughters sipped a potful of gruel.
Residents said they were yet to receive help.
"Everyday we hear someone will come with something. But at the end of day, no one turns up," said 60-year-old Jarina Begum.
India's Bihar, home to about 90 million people, is one of the country's poorest and most lawless states. Nearly 60 percent of its young children are malnourished, far higher than the 46 percent average nationally.
Officials said caring for millions of flood-hit children was daunting as hundreds of primary health centres (PHCs) -- the first point of healthcare in rural India -- had been flooded.
UNICEF said millions could fall sick with malaria, dengue fever and other diseases if authorities did not bring food and medicine within days to those stranded.
Although officials said they had stocked rehydration fluid sachets and anti-diarrhoea medicines in PHCs in anticipation of floods, they did not expect such a deluge, which many say is the worst inundation in memory.
"We were prepared, but not to the extent required," Bihar Health Secretary Deepak Kumar told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Nizam Ahmed in Jasaldia and Serajul Islam Quadir in Dhaka)