48,000 babies will be born in Rohingya refugee camps this year, aid group predicts
‘My brain does not actually know how to deal with this,’ said a Bangladeshi official in a town near the camps
An international aid agency projects that 48,000 babies will be born this year in overcrowded refugee camps for the Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh from neighbouring Myanmar.
Save the Children warned in a report released on Friday that the babies will be at increased risk of disease and malnutrition, and therefore of dying before the age of five. Most of the babies will probably be born at home in tents, the agency said.
“The camps have poor sanitation and are a breeding ground for diseases like diphtheria, measles and cholera, to which newborn babies are particularly vulnerable,” said Rachael Cummings, the agency’s health adviser in Cox’s Bazar, the nearest city to the camps. “This is no place for a child to be born.”
More than 600,000 Rohingya, a minority group from Rakhine state in western Myanmar, have fled what the United Nations says is a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar military and Buddhist mobs since late August last year.
