A 26-year-old pregnant woman, who went into premature labour, was brought from a waterlogged village on an island in the Sunderbans and hospitalised by civil defence volunteers after a journey of one-and-a-half hours on a speedboat.
Doctors said the life of Majida Sardar, 26, and the unborn child could have been at risk had she not been administered medicine at the hospital in good time.
Officials in South 24-Parganas said although they had evacuated over 3.46 lakh people before Cyclone Yaas, thousands were shifted on Wednesday as large parts in the coastal areas became waterlogged. Rise in water levels and breached embankments caused inundation in hundreds of villages in Namkhana, Gosaba, Patharpratima and Kultali.
Officials said such measures were possible only because the government had readied teams of civil defence volunteers, disaster response forces and the army at various strategic points.
“We had rescued many children and the elderly from various locations after the areas got waterlogged. We rescued thousands of people after several areas were reported inundated,” said P. Ulaganathan, the South 24-Parganas district magistrate.
“Our officials sent a team immediately after we heard about the pregnant woman,” said P. Ulaganathan, the South 24-Parganas district magistrate.
Majida, the wife of a migrant worker, was due to deliver her second child next month. But she suddenly reported severe pain and other symptoms of going into labour.
Villagers and family members of Majida said it was a very critical situation during the natural disaster as there was no boat to ferry her to the block hospital in Gosaba, around 20km from their remote village of Pathankali.
“Her pain started when the river embankment was breached and water started entering our village. As time passed, both my wife’s pain and the water level started increasing. I rushed to the local health |worker and requested her |to do something,” said Azad Rahaman Sardar, Majida’s husband, who returned| from Secunderabad in Telangana following a lockdown there. He works in |a private firm at Secunderabad.
The villagers said the family members tried their best to find a boat but none was ready to go as the water level was high.
District officials said they had received information through a local accredited social health activist (Asha) and asked civil defence volunteers to reach the place with a speedboat and rescue the woman.
The volunteers arrived within an hour.
“It was really hard to reach the place and rescue the woman. We carried her across the slippery embankment and got her to the boat. Later, we reached Gosaba and admitted her to the hospital,” said Debabrata Debnath, a civil defence volunteer who led the team.
Indranil Bargi, the block medical officer of health in Gosaba, said: “We have kept her under observation and hope she will deliver the baby tonight. If the condition of the patient deteriorates, we would shift her to a better hospital. It would have been very risky had she not been brought in on time,” said |Bargi.
Azad, the husband, said he had no words to thank the rescuers.
