The QRC team distributing relief materials in Myanmar.
Doha: An emergency response team from the Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) has reached the Rohingya camps established by the Government of Myanmar several kilometres away from Sittwe, the city where violence broke out between Alrakain Buddhist and Rohingya Muslims groups in June this year, a press release from QRC said yesterday.
The violence has resulted in more than 300 people being killed, over 3000 homes burned and 70,000 persons displaced and scattered in dozens of camps in several villages in Rakhine province according to reports by the United Nations. QRC’s emergency response team has identified immediate humanitarian needs in the camps. Initial information indicates that malaria, diarrhoea, and eye and skin diseases have begun to spread among refugees due to absence of sanitation and hygiene, and safe shelters coupled with the heavy rainfall and swamps formation.
As an initial response, QRC distributed food and non-food materials such as bed sheets, plastic sheets as well as mosquito nets to reduce the spread of malaria for 400 families.
QRC aims to meet the immediate and short term needs at the camps in coordination with the Myanmar Red Cross (MRC), the only National Society that provides services in the refugee camps.
Together with the MRC, the QRC will work to provide urgent health relief by operating a number of mobile clinics in the camp areas, apart from undertaking health awareness sessions, contributing to fight the spread of mosquitoes, and implementing a temporary shelter programme as the information from the field indicates that the local authorities do not intend to return the refugees to their homes in Sittwe any time soon for fear of renewed violence.
The Peninsula
