WHO gears up for monsoon in Rohingya refugee camps
With the onset of the rainy season, the WHO on Friday said it is strengthening contingency measures along with health partners for the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh to minimise the health impact of the monsoon for nearly 1.3 million people living in Cox's Bazar. WHO Representative to Bangladesh, Bardan Jung Rana said WHO and health sector partners are working with the Bangladesh government to maintain lifesaving primary and secondary health services for Rohingya refugees and their host communities in the ongoing rainy season.
"Heavy rains, floods and cyclone are expected to further deteriorate the already suboptimal water and sanitation conditions in the overcrowded refugee camps, increasing the risk of infectious disease such as acute watery diarrhoea, cholera, hepatitis, dengue fever and malaria, among others," said Rana. As a preventive measure, a massive cholera vaccination campaign was conducted in May targeting one million people – the refugees, their host communities and people residing in close vicinity to the camps.
This was the second massive cholera vaccination campaign for the Rohingyas, with 900 000 doses administered in November-December last year. India supported a landmark decision of the UN General Assembly for a comprehensive reform of the UN development system that Secretary General Antonio Guterres said will pave the way for a new era of "national ownership" of development.
The General Assembly on Thursday gave the green light to a bold new plan to make sustainable development a reality, described by Guterres as "the most ambitious and comprehensive transformation of the UN development system in decades".
The UN Secretary-General said the reform package paved the way for a new era of "national ownership" of development, supported by the whole UN system, in a tailored fashion, allowing countries to pursue sustainable economic and social development. The UN Secretariat said that the reform implementation will require some $255 million annually.
"It sets the foundations to reposition sustainable development at the heart of the United Nations," he said, after the 193-member intergovernmental body adopted the reform resolution by consensus.
"And it gives practical meaning to our collective promise to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for everyone, everywhere – with poverty eradication as its first goal, leaving no one behind," he said. "In the end, reform is about putting in place the mechanisms to make a real difference in the lives of people".