A MASSIVE blaze can erupt from mundane activities such as cooking and could send entire communities living in makeshift shelters scrambling for their lives.
In 2021, these community fires killed 15 Rohingya refugees and injured 560 others. A total of 45,000 people were displaced, with many hoping against hope that the same thing does not happen to them again.
But such is the challenge of living in uncertain conditions. Communities, including people working to help them, are also affected by their misfortunes. One such organization is Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Jan Vincent Sotito, a Filipino nurse who is currently working as a project coordinator in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, knows this firsthand.
A major fire in Cox’s Bazar happened just before he arrived in the community. He recounted that when the Doctors Without Borders team arrived at the site in Balukhali, they found that along with the houses of refugee families, their clinic was also in cinders.
Despite this, they wasted no time in setting up teams that will handle mental health and health promotion in the community. Their mental health team provided psychological first aid to those struggling to come to grips with the fire that razed their homes and caused their loved ones to perish. Another health team, Sotito said, also began working especially in helping those who were injured by the fire. Most of their injuries were caused by their attempts to save what little they had as well as members of their family.
But the loss of lives and property caused by catastrophic events such as fires in Rohingya refugee camps could not compare to the reality of everyday life as a refugee. Sotito said a gamut of health problems and human-rights violations continues to plague these marginalized people.
“There are many problems and there is only so much we can do. The refugees rely mostly on humanitarian aid. It is a difficult life for them, and the health issues are many,” Sotito said.
Reality on the ground
BASED on Human Rights Watch, the Rohingya have faced discrimination and repression since the Myanmar government denied them citizenship in 1982. This has made them stateless for the past four decades.
The situation of the refugees dramatically deteriorated, Sotito said, in the past five years when the Rohingya experienced violence, with their villages razed to the ground and their people killed or sexually abused. The Rohingya fled and close to a million found their way to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
MSF said Cox’s Bazar hosts one of the biggest refugee camps in the world, where nearly a million Rohingya sought refuge after fleeing persecution in Myanmar.
Doctors Without Borders has been supporting the Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar with primary healthcare, including mental health, sexual and reproductive health, and anti-sexual violence efforts.
MSF provides a range of specialized healthcare to the community across eight active facilities and two “standby” emergency facilities. These facilities serve more than 925,000 Rohingya refugees living in the camps as well as a growing number of patients from the host community.
Services include general healthcare, treatment of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, emergency care for trauma patients, mental health and women’s healthcare.
Doctors Without Borders also provides key support to water and sanitation activities in the camps such as latrine de-sludging, fecal sludge treatment, maintenance of hand pumps, tube wells and water networks, as well as hygiene promotion.
“Knowing the things happening all over the world, war, terrorism, calamities, the Rohingya issue has been pushed aside. In Bangladesh, the role of foreign organizations is not just to provide aid or healthcare. We also help the Rohingya community be heard, and talk about the situation for the international community to notice and to give importance,” Sotito said.
Health-seeking behavior
BASED on data from MSF between January and July this year, outpatients in Cox’s Bazar reached 253,859 people. This was very high compared to patients admitted at 12,029 only.
Sotito said this was despite the presence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, hypertension and asthma among the Rohingya. There were also a number of Hepatitis C cases as well as a rise in scabies infections.
“One of the most challenging things I have observed is how some people come to the hospital when they are already in critical condition due to traditional practices in the community, lack of trust in healthcare providers, combined with exclusion from healthcare in Myanmar,” Sotito said.
He added that it was common for the Rohingya to ask for Discharge Against Medical Advice (DAMA) and choose to seek treatment from their traditional healers. The local healers have also assisted in home deliveries as traditional birth attendants (TBAs).
Sotito said these different factors contribute to premature deaths in the community. “We need to work on strengthening and reinforcing our strategy.”
Global plea
HAVING seen the difficulty of the Rohingya in these camps, Sotito said it is important for the world to again give their people some attention.
The Rohingya people and the aid workers helped them recognize the importance of the efforts of the Bangladeshi government. However, more needs to be done for these stateless people.
Humanitarian attention to the Rohingya is challenged by other crises around the world. As announced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, funding for the Rohingya Joint Response Plan (JRP) decreased to $602 million in 2021 from $629 million in 2020. As of August 2022, the funding stands at only $266 million.
He said this is not enough to help a people whose fragility constantly exposes them to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, child labor, bonded labor, forced criminal activity, and other forms of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
“Without legal status they are exposed to the risk of being subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, extortion or even forced deportation,” Sotito said.
With this, he said countries must stop treating the Rohingya as a security threat. This will only keep them on the sidelines with their needs constantly brushed aside as if they did not matter.
In communities such as those in Cox’s Bazar, a simple house fire could turn disastrous and deadly in a matter of minutes. A simple disease could end the lives of a people before their time.
Amid the chaos that engulfs the Rohingya’s daily lives in camps like Cox’s Bazar, there are organizations like the MSF trying their best to make things better for a forgotten people.
They are lighting the fire in the hearts of the Rohingya, allowing hope for a better future to burn despite their sordid circumstances.
Image credits: Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), AP/Bernat Armangue , MSF