‘LOST’ DISEASE RAGES IN CAMPS
Diphtheria has killed 30 Rohingya refugees, most of them children
IN a makeshift bamboo clinic, small children struggle to breathe through surgical masks, victims of a forgotten but deadly disease that has torn through the teeming Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Diphtheria had been all but eradicated in Bangladesh until last year, when more than 650,000 Rohingya poured across the border fleeing a bloody military crackdown in Myanmar.
Packed into an area meant for a much smaller number of refugees and with little sanitation or healthcare, the new arrivals provided fertile ground for the highly contagious respiratory disease to take hold. It quickly spread through the camps, with the World Health Organisation reporting more than 3,600 cases.
The outbreak has claimed the lives of at least 30 refugees, mostly children, while a few Bangladeshis living near the camps have contracted the disease.
Carla Pla, head nurse at the specialist diphtheria unit run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders, said children were arriving with “severe” symptoms.
“This is a very challenging situation because everyday there are more children coming. The challenge to get the vaccine is also very difficult.”
Nearly 600 refugees have been referred there since it opened last month, putting enormous pressure on doctors who also struggle to treat rampant malnutrition, water-borne diseases and other diseases in the camps.
Most patients were children, some struggling to breathe.
Bangladeshi authorities prepared for other diseases and moved quickly to inoculate new arrivals against cholera and measles to prevent a health disaster.
But the emergence of diphtheria, which causes difficulty breathing and can lead to heart failure, paralysis and death if left untreated, caught aid workers off guard.
“We were taken aback when tests confirmed diphtheria in the camps. It was a long-lost disease in our country,” said Abdus Salam, chief medical officer for Cox’s Bazar district.
“Immediately, we acquired vaccines from abroad for an emergency response.”
Last month, they launched a huge vaccination push. Nearly 320,000 children under age 15 have been inoculated and another 160,000 children are expected to receive the vaccine this month.
High rates of vaccination mean diphtheria has become increasingly rare in much of the world, although Yemen is currently suffering an outbreak.
But, the Rohingya come from impoverished Rakhine State, where state-imposed restrictions have ensured abysmal living standards for the persecuted Muslim community, and many children are not vaccinated.
Pla said it was challenging for staff treating a disease that “only existed in the textbooks for all these years”, with many doctors seeing live cases for the first time in their careers.
The appearance of diphtheria, long forgotten in many parts of the world, has compounded the misery for close to one million displaced Rohingya living in hardship near the Myanmar border.
Seven specialist diphtheria field clinics have been set up to treat the rising number of patients since the outbreak, said WHO’s Southeast Asia emergency director Roderico Ofrin.
Together, the wards house 400 beds for patients, but a shortage of doctors has required medics to be flown in from Britain and elsewhere to battle the outbreak.
Treatment involves administering an antitoxin and antibiotics. AFP