The eight-month-old Rohingya boy was close to death when he arrived at the field hospital in a refugee camp, his tiny lungs racked by pneumonia as he struggled to draw breath. But he made it, saved by doctors at a new Red Cross field hospital in Cox’s Bazar, the largest clinic of its kind in the overcrowded camps stretching along the border with Myanmar. Red Cross doctors at the new hospital have been treating upwards of 200 patients a day, as exhausted Rohingya continue to cross into Bangladesh by land and sea, many in desperate need of treatment. The threat of a serious disease outbreak stalks the densely populated camps, where hundreds of thousands of refugees live squeezed together in basic shanties lacking proper toilets. For many Rohingya, the new hospital staffed by foreign doctors and stocked with equipment is their first encounter with modern medicine.

Source: Dhaka Tribune October 24, 2017 11:26 UTC