Staff Reporter :
While the exodus from Myanmar continues, heavy rains have deteriorated conditions of Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar district.
According to local and aid agencies, the heavy rains in the district exacerbated the conditions of tens of thousand of Rohingya refugees.
The latest arrivals are visibly famished, sick and exhausted from walking the long distance.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees living in an informal settlement at refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar district need immediate shelter, food and water.
When her village was torched in Myanmar, Rabeya Khatun gathered her six children and fled despite monsoon rains.
Frequently drenched through the eight-day slog over rough terrain to reach Bangladesh, two of her children came down with chills.
But now she is finally in the dry, under a UNHCR tarpaulin, her children – aged a few months to
11 years – gathered around her on a plastic sheet, her sick baby under a cloth in her lap.
“The rain cannot attack me anymore.”
“It was raining all yesterday, and we couldn’t sleep – but now the rain cannot attack me anymore,” she says.
An estimated 421,000 Rohingya – a largely stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar – have arrived in Bangladesh since the latest bout of violence broke out on August 25.
UN Refugee agency staff have provided some 150 family tents to newly arrived refugees, and have 6,000 more that will arrive in coming days, said Franklin Golay, a member of UNHCR field staff and part of a team providing water, latrines, tents and shelter in the area.
“Shelter is key, as we still have a lot of people sleeping along the roads without anything,” said Golay, who estimates the population of the informal settlement to be 15,000, and growing daily.
“Water and sanitation is also a vital issue because you have open defecation and people drinking water from unprotected sources,” he added.
While Rabeya and her children are now receiving help, many are still exposed to the elements and are struggling – among them 65-year-old Khadija, who fled Myanmar after attackers burned her village to the ground.
Exhausted after a week-long foot journey, she lies slumped on the ground.
“I am getting weaker and weaker,” she says. Asked what she needs, she said, “Shelter, food, water and medicine.”
“I need help. I don’t have shelter, I don’t have anything to eat. I have nothing,” said Amina Khadun another Rohingya woman.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) said many of the new arrivals, who have walked for days through jungle in intense heat and monsoon rains, are already sick and malnourished by the time they reach the teeming settlements of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
Camping in the open with little or no shelter on muddy hillsides and with no access to clean water or latrines, the very young and the old are at greatest risk from water borne and contagious diseases.
Newly arrived children are at high risk of vaccine preventable disease, said Dr. Samir Kumar Howlader, IOM National Health Programme Officer.
He said nutrition support and management of malnutrition, especially severe acute malnutrition, are also urgently needed for these children,”
“Lack of safe drinking water, personal hygiene and sanitation facilities has already resulted in acute watery diarrhea and other water borne diseases. So, disease surveillance and early warning systems also need to be strengthened significantly,” he added.
Others have arrived in Bangladesh with injuries inflicted in Myanmar.
“I had been living with a gunshot wound for five days. I would have lost my leg if I didn’t get treatment,” said Anayet Ullah, 18, who was in a critical condition when he was treated by an IOM medical team at Ukhiya government health complex.
The doctors referred him to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital, where he recovered.
The agencies also say that an estimated 14,000 pregnant women are in need of maternal and child health care.
An estimated 50 per cent of them are considered to have complicated pregnancies and may need emergency obstetric and neonatal care.
While the exodus from Myanmar continues, heavy rains have deteriorated conditions of Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar district.
According to local and aid agencies, the heavy rains in the district exacerbated the conditions of tens of thousand of Rohingya refugees.
The latest arrivals are visibly famished, sick and exhausted from walking the long distance.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees living in an informal settlement at refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar district need immediate shelter, food and water.
When her village was torched in Myanmar, Rabeya Khatun gathered her six children and fled despite monsoon rains.
Frequently drenched through the eight-day slog over rough terrain to reach Bangladesh, two of her children came down with chills.
But now she is finally in the dry, under a UNHCR tarpaulin, her children – aged a few months to
11 years – gathered around her on a plastic sheet, her sick baby under a cloth in her lap.
“The rain cannot attack me anymore.”
“It was raining all yesterday, and we couldn’t sleep – but now the rain cannot attack me anymore,” she says.
An estimated 421,000 Rohingya – a largely stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar – have arrived in Bangladesh since the latest bout of violence broke out on August 25.
UN Refugee agency staff have provided some 150 family tents to newly arrived refugees, and have 6,000 more that will arrive in coming days, said Franklin Golay, a member of UNHCR field staff and part of a team providing water, latrines, tents and shelter in the area.
“Shelter is key, as we still have a lot of people sleeping along the roads without anything,” said Golay, who estimates the population of the informal settlement to be 15,000, and growing daily.
“Water and sanitation is also a vital issue because you have open defecation and people drinking water from unprotected sources,” he added.
While Rabeya and her children are now receiving help, many are still exposed to the elements and are struggling – among them 65-year-old Khadija, who fled Myanmar after attackers burned her village to the ground.
Exhausted after a week-long foot journey, she lies slumped on the ground.
“I am getting weaker and weaker,” she says. Asked what she needs, she said, “Shelter, food, water and medicine.”
“I need help. I don’t have shelter, I don’t have anything to eat. I have nothing,” said Amina Khadun another Rohingya woman.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) said many of the new arrivals, who have walked for days through jungle in intense heat and monsoon rains, are already sick and malnourished by the time they reach the teeming settlements of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
Camping in the open with little or no shelter on muddy hillsides and with no access to clean water or latrines, the very young and the old are at greatest risk from water borne and contagious diseases.
Newly arrived children are at high risk of vaccine preventable disease, said Dr. Samir Kumar Howlader, IOM National Health Programme Officer.
He said nutrition support and management of malnutrition, especially severe acute malnutrition, are also urgently needed for these children,”
“Lack of safe drinking water, personal hygiene and sanitation facilities has already resulted in acute watery diarrhea and other water borne diseases. So, disease surveillance and early warning systems also need to be strengthened significantly,” he added.
Others have arrived in Bangladesh with injuries inflicted in Myanmar.
“I had been living with a gunshot wound for five days. I would have lost my leg if I didn’t get treatment,” said Anayet Ullah, 18, who was in a critical condition when he was treated by an IOM medical team at Ukhiya government health complex.
The doctors referred him to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital, where he recovered.
The agencies also say that an estimated 14,000 pregnant women are in need of maternal and child health care.
An estimated 50 per cent of them are considered to have complicated pregnancies and may need emergency obstetric and neonatal care.
