Health crisis looms large over Rohingyas

A severe health crisis looms large as the Rohingyas are faced with shortage of safe drinking water.
The situation worsened as heavy rainfall, continuing for the past three days, has contaminated other water sources such as fountains and ponds, adding to the sufferings of the Rohingyas and exposing them to serious health hazard.
Over 4.20 lakh Rohingyas, ethnic minority people of Myanmar, have so far entered Bangladesh fleeing violence, what the United Nations has termed ethnic cleansing, in their homeland Rakhine State since August 25.
They took shelter wherever they could, in open space and forests, on hills and roadsides, putting huge pressure on existing water and sanitation facilities.
Local officials and international aid agencies said that Rohingyas were defecating in the open spaces and rain water was washing these human excreta to the ponds and water bodies from where many were collecting water for drinking and others daily needs.
International aid agencies estimated that additional 5.86 crore litre safe water per day was the minimum requirement for the Rohingyas. Crisis for Rohingyas taking shelter in Unchiprang area was more severe as the area had no access to groundwater. Areas close to border and the Naf River had no or very limited access to safe water and latrines.
‘Existing water sources are rapidly reducing; if the current population density remains, there may be serious water scarcity by January 2018,’ said a situation report prepared by international aid agencies.
Camping in the open spaces with little or no shelter on muddy hillsides with no access to clean water or latrines, the very young and the old are at greatest risk of waterborne and contagious diseases, International Organisation for Migration said at a statement on Tuesday.
‘Lack of safe drinking water, personal hygiene and sanitation facilities have already resulted in acute watery diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases. So, disease surveillance and early warning systems also need to be strengthened significantly,’ said IOM national health programme officer Dr Samir Kumar Howlader.
The Department of Public Health Engineering in Cox’s Bazar assistant engineer Mohammad Nasarullah told New Age on Tuesday that demand of safe drinking water for Ukhia and Teknaf in the normal period was about 5 crore litre per day. ‘As so many Rohingyas have taken shelter in the localities, the demand of additional water just doubled,’ he added.
‘Many of these Rohingays have taken shelter cutting forests and hills where usually Bangladeshi people do not live, so safe drinking water facilities like tube wells are absent,’ he said adding that many of them were collecting drinking water from local communities and alternative sources.
He said that they were trying their best to provide safe drinking water by carrier, setting up new tube wells and deep tube wells. ‘We are planting 200 tube wells, 35 deep tube wells and 800 latrines in the areas where Rohingyas are living,’ he added.
He also warned about severe water crisis in the winter season when usually groundwater level went down and overuse of existing water sources might sent the water level further down.
UN agencies said that 4.20 lakh Rohingyas entered Bangladesh after August 25. Bangladesh foreign ministry officials estimated that the number of Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh crossed 8.38 lakh.
The UNHCR and the IOM expressed fear that the new influx might take to 10 lakh the number of Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing began in Rakhine on August 25, when Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army reportedly attacked dozens of police posts and checkpoints and one military base in Rakhine.
The Rohingyas are a stateless ethnic minority in Myanmar not allowed to exercise their basic rights including the freedom to move, right to education, work and other social, civil and political rights.
Hundreds of Rohingyas continued to enter Bangladesh crossing the River Naf and different land border points on Tuesday amid rain.
Rohingays flooded sides of Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf road and the Marine Drive making makeshift shelters with plastic sheet. Similar reports poured in from Balukhali and Kutupalang of Ukhia and Shamlapur and Sabarang of Teknaf.
Rohingyas said that heavy downpour in the last three days contaminated fountains of Madur Chara at west Kutupalang, Balukhali Chara and ponds of Ukhia. The rainfall also submerged Balukhali, Kutupalang and Thayenkhali areas adding to the sufferings thousands of Rohingays living there.
Rohingya man Nizam at Thayenkhali said that they used to collect water from a pond but it overflowed with filthy water due to rain. 
Torrential rain heaped new misery on the Rohingyas, who continued struggling for survival with shortage of food and safe drinking water. During the past three days heavy rain caused by a low formed over coastal regions of Bangladesh was falling with intervals.
Met office in Dhaka recorded 185mm rainfall in Cox’s Bazar between Saturday night and Tuesday noon.
Rohingays living on the top of hill at Thayenkhali and Raikhang of Unchiprang were worst sufferers in absence of safe drinking water. Rohingya Rahman Mia at Thayenkhali said that they needed to trek two kilometres on hills to collect safe drinking water from the nearest locality.
Rohingyas said that as they were living in temporary shelters, there was hardly any space for sanitation facilities. International aid agencies estimated that additional 20,000 emergency latrines were required to meet the demand.
They said that temporary toilets set up in the registered and unregistered camps were already in a mess and little water supply hardly helped the hapless Rohingyas to survive.
People stranded in the border had no or very limited access to safe water and sanitation facilities, local people said.
Service providers at Cox’s Bazar general hospital, upazila health complexes, community clinics, satellite clinics and aid providers’ clinics continued struggling to cope with the number of patients and they warned about outbreak of waterborne, viral or microbial diseases.
Cox’s Bazar civil surgeon Abdus Salam said that most of the Rohingya patients were suffering from fever, cold and cough, dysentery and diarrhoea. 
New analysis of satellite imagery from Myanmar’s Rakhine State showed near total destruction of 214 villages, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
‘The detailed satellite images, made possible due to a clearing of monsoon cloud on September 16, 2017, reveal destruction from burning much greater than previously known. They show the destruction of tens of thousands of homes across Maungdaw and Rathedaung Townships, part of the Burmese security forces’ campaign of ethnic cleansing that has forced over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh,’ the rights group said.
‘New maps of the damage show near-total destruction of the 214 villages seen in satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch, with more than 90 per cent of the structures in each village damaged. The images corroborate accounts gathered by Human Right Watch from refugees who have described arson, killing, and looting by the Burmese military, police, and ethnic Rakhine mobs,’ it said.
London-based Amnesty International said that more Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh in the space of three weeks than the total number of refugees who fled by sea to Europe in 2016.
‘The horrific situation in Myanmar is exactly why we need more than just a sticking-plaster approach to helping those fleeing war and persecution. After being subjected to horrific violence, including killings and having their villages burned to the ground, these Rohingya refugees are now facing a humanitarian crisis as Bangladesh struggles to support them,’ said Amnesty International in a statement.
The latest evidence published by Amnesty International points to a mass-scale scorched-earth campaign across northern Rakhine State, where Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs are burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random as they try to flee. In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity – systematic attacks and forcible deportation of civilians.
A group of 58 Asian and African human rights defenders in a statement from Gwangju in South Korea termed the violence against the Rohingyas as genocide and called upon the international community to ensure that all possible measures were adopted to end the violence committed against the Rohingya people. 
‘The member states of the UN should collectively and bilaterally engage with the Government of Myanmar to ensure that the Government stop the violence its agencies are committing against the Rohingya people and to end this ongoing crisis immediately,’ said the statement

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net