Despite intensified efforts to reach medical aid to victims, nearly 13,000 people overnight contacted diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases with further recession of water on flood-hit areas.

Health experts said waterborne diseases would continue to ravage the affected areas for at least the next three months while UN officials here, on condition anonymity, told BSS that Bangladesh would need more than $43 million to tackle the health crisis alone.

According to the disaster management ministry, the death toll in the current spate of flood reached 691 while the government's central health control room yesterday reported 20 more deaths — ten in drowning, five in pneumonia, five in snakebites and two in diarrhoea.

Flood Warning Center yesterday reported further fall in water level of major rivers at most points though out of its 86 monitoring points. Rivers at nine points, including Balu at Demra, Turag at Mirpur and Shitalakya, were still flowing above danger marks.

Disaster management ministry said 1.61 million people were still living in officially recorded makeshift shelters as many have lost their homesteads in river erosion.

Food scarcity, loss of work opportunity and fears of losing food and medical aids discouraged many to return home, reports said.

UN officials quoting Disaster Emergency Response Group (DERG) said loss of job and ailments would require the government and aid agencies to provide food aid for the next six months. BSS district correspondents and roving journalists said despite acute food shortage at places, people were seen sharing their meals with domestic animals and even street dogs, which were forced to share the same shelters with the marooned.

Hydrologists and meteorologists have cautioned against another spate of deluge that may hit Bangladesh later this month in line with the country's regular pattern but expressed the hope that by then the current deluge level would recede further reducing fears of massive floods.