B’desh considers sterilisation plan
PALONGKHALI: Bangladesh is planning to introduce voluntary sterilisation in its Rohingya camps, where nearly a million refugees are fighting for space, after efforts to encourage birth control failed.
More than 600,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since a military crackdown in Myanmar in August triggered an exodus, straining resources in the impoverished country.
The latest arrivals have joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled in earlier waves from Myanmar, where the stateless minority has endured decades of persecution.
Pintu Kanti Bhattacharjee, head of the family planning service in Cox’s Bazar district where the camps are based, said there was little awareness of birth control among the Rohingya.
“The whole community has been deliberately left behind,” he told AFP, citing a lack of education in Myanmar, where the Rohingya are viewed as illegal immigrants and denied access to many services.
Bhattacharjee said large families were the norm in the camps, where some parents had up to 19 children and many Rohingya men have more than one wife.
District family planning authorities have launched a drive to provide contraception, but say they have so far managed to distribute just 549 packets of condoms among the refugees, who are reluctant to use them.
They have asked the government to approve a plan to launch vasectomies for Rohingya men and tubectomies for women, Bhattacharjee said.
But they face an uphill battle. Many refugees said they believed a large family would help them survive in the camps. Others had been told contraception was against the tenets of Islam.