MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th May, 2020) The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is working with partners to prepare isolation, treatment and quarantine facilities, as well as intensive care units (ICU), in Bangladesh's Rohingya refugee camps in case the COVID-19 disease spreads there, Louise Donovan, UNHCR spokesperson in the city of Cox's Bazar, told Sputnik.
Bangladesh, the most densely populated country in the world, also hosts the world's largest refugee camp near Cox's Bazar. To date, there are over 16,600 COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh.
"UNHCR and partners are working round the clock to establish response capacity in the event of an outbreak. UNHCR has almost completed the construction of two Isolation and Treatment facilities (ITCs) which will be used to treat severe cases amongst the refugee and local population. Other humanitarian partners are also constructing similar facilities," Donovan said.
The spokesperson noted that the agency had also established quarantine facilities throughout the camps and provided support to existing health facilities in the area with training, personal protection equipment and other resources.
"UNHCR is supporting the national hospital in Cox's Bazar to establish an Intensive Care Unit, which will be operational shortly, with 10 ICU beds and 8 high dependency beds," Donovan said.
She noted, however, that it was likely that a virus outbreak would spread very quickly in the refugee camps, given their huge population and overcrowded conditions.
"There is currently a global shortage of COVID-19 related equipment and supplies, including tests. This is also the case in Bangladesh, a highly densely populated country," Donovan said, noting, however, that Bangladesh was currently scaling up its testing capacities nationwide.
According to the spokesperson, a field laboratory of Bangladesh's Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research started operating in Cox's Bazar on April 2, and nearly 100 tests are now conducted daily for both refugees and the host community in the area.
As of late April, about 860,000 refugees live in Cox's Bazar, most of whom are ethnic Rohingya Muslims forced to flee their homes in neighboring Myanmar amid an army offensive in August 2017. The Myanmar authorities launched an unprecedented violence campaign against the Rohingya after militants, allegedly from this minority group, carried out attacks on police posts in the country's north-western state of Rakhine.
A UN fact-finding mission to the country in 2018 said that there were grounds to charge Myanmar with crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya people. In January, the International Court of Justice ruled that Myanmar must fully implement all measures to prevent the murder, torture or persecution of people based on racial, ethnic or religious grounds.
