Diphtheria Outbreaks Reports, WHO
Diphtheria had been all but eradicated in Bangladesh until last year, when tens of thousands of Rohingya poured across the border fleeing a bloody military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar, Strait Times reported.
Packed into an area meant for a much smaller number of refugees, and with little sanitation or healthcare, the new arrivals provided fertile ground for the highly contagious respiratory disease to take hold.
It quickly spread through the camps, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting more than 3,600 cases.
The outbreak has already claimed the lives of at least 30 refugees, mostly children, while a handful of Bangladeshis living near the camps have also contracted the disease.
More than 655,000 of Myanmar’s Muslim minority have fled across the border to Bangladesh since late August when the Myanmar army launched a sweeping crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Northern Rakhine state.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein stressed that attacks on the Rohingya had been “well thought out and planned” and he had asked Myanmar’s de facto leader to do more to stop the military atrocities.
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