Violence behind them, Rohingya face deadly new enemy

Disease is now the biggest enemy of more than 600,000 Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state over the past two months. 
With few signs that they can return to their homes anytime soon, the threat of infections looms large in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya refugee camps, the Daily Star reports. 
Experts fear that the border district, where more than 600,000 refugees are sheltered in overcrowded camps lacking pure water and sanitation facilities, is faced with a long-term public health challenge.
Weakened in many cases by malnutrition and with little vaccination available in their homeland, the persecuted minority is vulnerable to diseases like tuberculosis, measles, cholera and hepatitis and HIV-Aids. 
“A large number of these people are malnourished and have a weak immune system,” the Daily Star quoted one physician working for an international NGO in the camps as saying. “The highly congested camps are perfect sites for fast transmission of diseases.”
Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), which coordinates the operation agencies in the camps, says that about 387,000 Rohingya refugees are suffering from malnutrition.
Cox’s Bazar Civil Surgeon Dr Abdus Salam told the Daily Star that a total of 347, 000 refugees had so far received treatment at different health centres.
Of them, 65 were diagnosed with TB, 12 with malaria, 44 with measles, 300 with jaundice, 1,000 with Hepatitis B and C, 29 with HIV/Aids, 70,000 with respiratory tract infection, 40,000 with diarrhoea, 30,000 with skin disease and 9,000 with various injuries.
On Monday countries pledged a total of US$345 million to care for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which the United Nations called an “encouraging” step in the response to the intensifying crisis.
But UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock sounded a note of caution. “Pledges are one thing,” he told reporters. “It’s really important to us that the pledges are translated as soon as possible into contributions.”
The head of the International Organisation for Migration, William Lacey Swing, called the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh “the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world”.
This week, the United States announced it was considering further actions over Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya minority, including targeted sanctions under its Global Magnitsky law.

Tension still high in Rakhine
Yangon-based Eleven Media reports that ethnic tension remains high in Rakhine state, where about 1,500 Buddhist residents protested this week against an upcoming national verification process, calling on the government not to bow to international pressure by redesignating “Bengali interlopers” as Rohingya. 
“Among the Bengali there are terrorists, arsonists and murderers and we don’t want them back,” Eleven Media quoted protest organiser Aung Htay as saying. “We want the verification project to be done according to the 1982 citizenship laws. We also demand that the government tell us what the plans are for rehabilitation and rebuilding. It is absurd that the future of Rakhine ethnic citizens is extremely uncertain but efforts are being placed into accepting them instead.”
Rohingya have been systematically deprived of basic rights including citizenship over decades in majority Buddhist Myanmar.
In the latest crackdown, Myanmar’s security forces fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians, including children, and committed widespread sexual violence, according to UN investigators.