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Almost 150,000 Rohingya children in urgent need of supplementary food to stave off or treat malnutrition | Save the Children International
Save the Children is warning of a malnutrition crisis in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, where more than half a million Rohingya have arrived in the past six weeks after fleeing horrific violence and bloodshed over the border in Myanmar.
An estimated 281,000 newly arrived Rohingya are in need of urgent nutrition support to prevent or treat malnutrition, according to new data from the Inter-Sector Coordination Group, including 145,000 children under the age of five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.
At least 14,000 newly arrived Rohingya children under five are already believed to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
“We’re seeing an alarming number of children arriving in Bangladesh desperately hungry and malnourished after fleeing their homes in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State. Then they are exposed to grim living conditions in camps where they don’t have good hygiene, where there is dirty, contaminated water everywhere and where they have no choice but to rely on food rations to survive,” said the Director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit, Dr Unni Krishnan.
“Not only does this exacerbate their nutritional status, but it puts them at a far greater risk of contracting a water-borne disease like cholera, which, for children like this could easily be fatal. We know that in these conditions, the risk of a major outbreak of disease is very real.
“In over 20 years as a humanitarian worker I’ve never seen a situation like this, where people are so desperate for basic assistance and conditions so dire. I’m extremely concerned about the health of the youngest Rohingya children, who are facing a frightening reality that no child should have to endure.”
Save the Children is warning of a malnutrition crisis in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, where more than half a million Rohingya have arrived in the past six weeks after fleeing horrific violence and bloodshed over the border in Myanmar.
An estimated 281,000 newly arrived Rohingya are in need of urgent nutrition support to prevent or treat malnutrition, according to new data from the Inter-Sector Coordination Group, including 145,000 children under the age of five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.
At least 14,000 newly arrived Rohingya children under five are already believed to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
“We’re seeing an alarming number of children arriving in Bangladesh desperately hungry and malnourished after fleeing their homes in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State. Then they are exposed to grim living conditions in camps where they don’t have good hygiene, where there is dirty, contaminated water everywhere and where they have no choice but to rely on food rations to survive,” said the Director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit, Dr Unni Krishnan.
“Not only does this exacerbate their nutritional status, but it puts them at a far greater risk of contracting a water-borne disease like cholera, which, for children like this could easily be fatal. We know that in these conditions, the risk of a major outbreak of disease is very real.
“In over 20 years as a humanitarian worker I’ve never seen a situation like this, where people are so desperate for basic assistance and conditions so dire. I’m extremely concerned about the health of the youngest Rohingya children, who are facing a frightening reality that no child should have to endure.”