Fear of epidemic disaster as disease stalks Rohingya camps

The UN has warned of a humanitarian ‘nightmare’ unfolding in Bangladesh

The UN has warned of a humanitarian “nightmare” unfolding in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, where half a million people have taken shelter after fleeing violence in Myanmar in unprecedented waves.

With a lack of clean water and toilets, aid workers say a major health disaster is imminent.

Heavy monsoon rain is compounding the risk of disease outbreak, with field doctors reporting a huge spike in cases of severe diarrhoea, especially among children.

The near daily torrential downpours send streams rushing through areas where tens of thousands openly defecate every day. For some, this murky runoff is their only source of drinking water.

A stench of excreta hangs in the air on the outskirts of Kutupalong, a camp that already housed tens of thousands of refugees before the latest influx saw it mushroom into a fetid tent city stretching for miles.

At a field clinic, a long queue of refugees waiting to see the only doctor available stretched beyond the tent into the pouring rain. Dr Alamul Haque sees upwards of 400 patients a day and looked exhausted as he described the spiralling number of children presenting with waterborne illnesses. “Earlier parents were bringing one or two children with them. Now it’s three to four,” Dr Haque, from Bangladeshi charity SDI, told AFP.

“It’s been raining, so human waste is running everywhere. There is a high chance of a diarrhoea epidemic here.”

New groundwater wells are being dug quickly across the camps, which stretch along the Cox’s Bazar district bordering Myanmar.

But there remains a shortage of fresh water. serious

Toilets are being filled as fast as they are being built, forcing people to defecate wherever they can.

The Red Cross says camps are teetering on the precipice of a full-scale health disaster.

Conditions are ripe for an illness like cholera to tear through the camps, experts say.

“The risk of there being an acute, watery diarrhoea epidemic is real and serious,” said an international health and sanitation expert, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to media.

“If the current situation stays the same, I guarantee it. It’s not if, it’s when.”

AP An elderly Rohingya Muslim woman stumbles as she walks with a group from Myanmar towards a camp for refugees in Teknaf, Bangladesh, on Friday.

AP A Rohingya Muslim man carries an elderly woman and walks towards a camp for refugees after crossing over the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh, in Teknaf, on Friday.

Reuters Injured women, who said their family members were killed by Myanmar army before they fled to Bangladesh, rest at the