Dhaka limits refugee movement
Children at crowded camps to be immunised
COX’S BAZAR: Bangladeshi authorities have taken steps to restrict the movement of Muslim Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar into crowded border camps and have started immunising tens of thousands of children against diseases.
Bangladesh has been overwhelmed with more than 400,000 Rohingya, who fled their homes in the last three weeks amid a crisis the United Nations describes as ethnic cleansing.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who lambasted Myanmar for “atrocities” during a visit to border camps last week, left Dhaka yesterday to address the annual UN gathering in New York.
Abdus Salam, the top government administrator in the Cox’s Bazar hospital, said some 150,000 children would be immunised over seven days for measles, rubella and polio.
The UN says there are some 240,000 children living in dire conditions.
“There are a lot of weak and malnourished children among the new arrivals,” Unicef representative in Bangladesh Edouard Beigbeder said.
“If proper preventive measures are not taken, highly infectious diseases, especially measles, could even cause an outbreak.”
Two pre-existing Rohingya camps were already beyond capacity and the new arrivals were staying in schools or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields.
Police were checking vehicles to prevent the Rohingya from spreading to nearby towns in an attempt to control a chaotic situation.
“There is an instruction from the prime minister that we must treat Rohingya Muslims maintaining human rights,” said A.K.M. Iqbal Hossain, a police superintendent.
“As many private and social organisations are coming and distributing relief, sometimes chaos breaks out ... it’s very difficult to keep order but we are doing so.”
The refugees began pouring from Myanmar’s Rakhine state after a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks on security posts on Aug 25, prompting Myanmar’s military to launch “clearance operations” to root out the rebels.
Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs. The Myanmar government says hundreds have died, mostly “terrorists”, and that 176 out of 471 Rohingya villages have been abandoned.
On the first day of the immunisation campaign on Saturday, doctors treated some 9,000 children for rubella and nearly 5,000 for polio.
Salam said basic and emergency health services were being provided through 36 medical camps with focus on children and women.
“Many of them are suffering from diarrhoea, dehydration and skin diseases. They are coming to hospitals with such complications,” he said.
As the weather fluctuated in Cox’s Bazar between rains and sunny and humid days, many children were suffering from flu and risked contracting pneumonia, he added.