Mercy stepping up aid efforts for Rakhine victims

PETALING JAYA: Mercy Malaysia is stepping up its aid efforts for victims of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

The medical and humanitarian aid group will provide 60,000 hot meals, comprising cooked rice, eggs and lentils as well as 150,000 litres of clean water to refugees at the Kutupalong and Thankkali camps near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

The refugees will also receive non-food items such as blankets, pails and jerrycans, it said in a statement here yesterday.

Mercy Malaysia said its mobile clinics in Bangladesh would cover more than 180,000 refugees, adding that more volunteer doctors would be deployed from Malaysia based on the needs on the ground.

All these activities, it said, would be carried out in the next three months, with a possible extension of up to six months.

“There is an urgent need to help the refugees in Cox’s Bazar and those of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) affected in Myanmar,” said its president Datuk Dr Ahmad Faizal Perdaus in a statement here yesterday.

For those in Rakhine, Mercy Malaysia will provide dry food items and 4,000 sheets of tarpaulin in Taung Pyo where some 200,000 internally displaced Rohingya are sheltering.

It will also open a mobile clinic in Maungdaw at the request of the state health department and continue its medical programme in Sittwe.

“We are continuing to provide Primary Health Care through three mobile clinics in Sittwe villages as well as operating the Thet Kel Pyin Sub-Rural Health Centre, the only centre providing health services to Rohingya inside the camps,” it said.

Mercy Malaysia said RM3mil was needed to pay for the aid operations in Rakhine and Bangladesh. Donations can be made to Mercy Malaysia’s Myanmar Relief Fund with details available at www. mercy.org.my.