Monsoon holds bad days in store for Rohingyas

Rohingyas living in overcrowded camps and settlements are likely to be at greater risk during the upcoming monsoon season which may bring in landslides aggravating the already paltry sanitation and health facilities for them.
The Rohingyas are facing more life-threatening dangers from the weather and environmental conditions due to impending monsoon season with at least 1,00,000 ethnic minorities requiring relocation. 
Rain can aggravate the suffering of the Rohingyas as it can further deteriorate the existing inadequate sanitation facilities which eventually can increase water-borne diseases. 
Rohingyas are exposed to disasters like landslide and cyclone in absence of easy accessibility and quick evacuation system, and their indiscriminate setting up of shelters on the slippery hill slopes and felling of trees have already loosen the soil structure.
Spread of diphtheria among Rohingyas is still a headache for them as well as locals as the latter are coming in touch with ethnic minorities for carrying out humanitarian assistance and other services.
‘No one can predict what would happen. We are expecting some problem during rainy season,’ refugee relief and repatriation commissioner of Cox’s Bazar Mohammad Abul Kalam told New Age on Saturday.
‘We are taking some preparations in phases which are being implemented,’ he said adding that the next Rohingya response plan due in March would also shed light on the issues related to rainy season.
Cox’s Bazar civil surgeon Abdus Salam said that they were in fear about the health situation of Rohingyas during the pre-monsoon and monsoon season.
‘Water-borne diseases can spread fast and we cannot deny the possibility of an outbreak,’ he said.
In Bangladesh, pre-monsoon hot season with rain usually starts in March through May and full force monsoon season lasts from June through October.
Salam said that they contained the rapid spread of diphtheria among local as well as locals.
On February 15, World Health Organisation said a total of 5,659 clinically suspected diphtheria cases were reported including 38 deaths since November 8. 
A total of 48 suspected cases have been reported from the host community since the start of the outbreak. Diphtheria was hardly found in Bangladesh for decades due to high coverage of vaccination.
A WHO official told New Age that a challenging task is waiting for health service providers in the rainy season. 
‘Rohingyas are living in overcrowded camps amid seriously unhygienic condition with inadequate sanitation facilities; this is breeding ground of water-borne diseases; it will further deteriorate,’ he said.
Directorate General of Health Services control room on Saturday said that 1.57 lakh acute water diarrhoea and 70,000 bloody diarrhoea patients had taken treatment at indoor and outdoor medical facilities since August 26. 
They, however, could not say whether all these patients took treatment once or more.
Since August 25, a campaign of extreme violence in Rakhine state of Myanmar has forced approximately 688,000 Rohingya people across the border into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The speed and scale of the influx led to a massive humanitarian emergency.
The new influx began after Myanmar security forces responded to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s reported attacks by launching a violence that the UN denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Officials estimated that the new influx increased the number of Myanmar people living in Bangladesh to 11.07 lakh.
The fast exodus of Rohingyas forced aid groups and the Bangladesh government to make quick arrangements to supply shelter, food, water, healthcare, and latrines on flood-prone fields and slippery hill slopes, loosening the soil structure.
Aid workers have expressed fear that shelters, latrines and other infrastructure hurriedly put in place to cope with the situation may be destroyed in few minutes of any kind of disasters like landslide and cyclone. 
‘In the case of a cyclone or a landslide, evacuation of so many people will be a challenging task,’ Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence operation and maintenance director Major AKM Shakil Newaz said.
‘Landslide and flood risk hazard mapping reveals that at least 100,000 people are in grave danger from these risks and require relocation to new areas or within current neighbourhoods,’ said a situation report of Inter Sector Coordination Group comprising of UN agencies and other international aid agencies that came out on February 12.
‘Site improvement efforts are critical to help minimise the risk of flooding and landslides,’ it said.
The situation report said that at least 93 learning centers in flood prone areas are expected to be closed — without the possibility to relocate —due to lack of space. This will reduce classroom capacity for approximately 10,000 Rohingya children.


News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net