Arakan News Agency
The world’s largest cholera vaccination campaign since the disaster in Haiti, began to put in place in Bangladesh’s Rohingya camps on Tuesday to protect 650,000 Myanmar refugees living in desperate conditions that raise fears of a health disaster in the event of a pandemic.
“These people are suffering from shortages in most of the basic infrastructure, especially in latrines and water supplies,” UNICEF Communication Officer Um Sakil Faizullah told AFP. In this kind of situation, the conditions for a cholera epidemic are met. ”
Faizullah said the largest oral cholera vaccination campaign was in Haiti in November 2016 when 800,000 people were vaccinated. Some 520,000 Rohingya Muslims have arrived in the impoverished country of South Asia since the end of August to escape what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The flow of refugees from Myanmar has resumed vigorously this week, following a recent slowdown, with the arrival of thousands of new Rohingyas. They told the AFP that the Myanmar army prevented them from reaching their regular sources of food, grocery stores and markets.
UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bangladeshi authorities launched a preventive campaign to avoid a health crisis in one of the most serious humanitarian crises of the early 21st century, during which 900,000 doses of vaccine are expected. In the coming weeks, humanitarians will review 650,000 Rohingya and then give a second vaccine in a second stage to 250,000 children between the ages of one and five years.
Fluttering on the arid hills where the refugee camps of Thangkhali have been established, yellow flags pointing to the vaccination centers.
One group of activists started the vaccination campaign on Tuesday afternoon as volunteers walked through the tents and called refugees through loudspeakers to go for the vaccine.
A crowd of Rohingyas was waiting for their turn in front of a humanitarian tent where humanitarian activists opened bottles of vaccine and poured them into the mouths of refugees. “The humanitarian workers told us the medicine was good and we would not be sick anymore,” said Nabi Hussein, a 35-year-old refugee who arrived in Thangkhali two weeks ago while waiting in line with two of his sons.
The world’s largest cholera vaccination campaign since the disaster in Haiti, began to put in place in Bangladesh’s Rohingya camps on Tuesday to protect 650,000 Myanmar refugees living in desperate conditions that raise fears of a health disaster in the event of a pandemic.
“These people are suffering from shortages in most of the basic infrastructure, especially in latrines and water supplies,” UNICEF Communication Officer Um Sakil Faizullah told AFP. In this kind of situation, the conditions for a cholera epidemic are met. ”
Faizullah said the largest oral cholera vaccination campaign was in Haiti in November 2016 when 800,000 people were vaccinated. Some 520,000 Rohingya Muslims have arrived in the impoverished country of South Asia since the end of August to escape what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The flow of refugees from Myanmar has resumed vigorously this week, following a recent slowdown, with the arrival of thousands of new Rohingyas. They told the AFP that the Myanmar army prevented them from reaching their regular sources of food, grocery stores and markets.
UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bangladeshi authorities launched a preventive campaign to avoid a health crisis in one of the most serious humanitarian crises of the early 21st century, during which 900,000 doses of vaccine are expected. In the coming weeks, humanitarians will review 650,000 Rohingya and then give a second vaccine in a second stage to 250,000 children between the ages of one and five years.
Fluttering on the arid hills where the refugee camps of Thangkhali have been established, yellow flags pointing to the vaccination centers.
One group of activists started the vaccination campaign on Tuesday afternoon as volunteers walked through the tents and called refugees through loudspeakers to go for the vaccine.
A crowd of Rohingyas was waiting for their turn in front of a humanitarian tent where humanitarian activists opened bottles of vaccine and poured them into the mouths of refugees. “The humanitarian workers told us the medicine was good and we would not be sick anymore,” said Nabi Hussein, a 35-year-old refugee who arrived in Thangkhali two weeks ago while waiting in line with two of his sons.
