TROPICAL DISEASES SPREAD IN ROHINGY’S MAUNGDAW

Maungdaw, 20 Jumadil Akhir 1435/20 April 2014 (MINA) – Tropical diseases –chickenpox, fever, cough and vomiting have recently spread among the people in Maungdaw south, Hashim, a local doctor said.

 

.“Mostly children of Khonza Bill (village), Udaung village and Aley Than Kyaw village have been suffering from various diseases in this hot season.”

 

According to a village elder Kasim (not real name), some effected children were going to the government hospital of Aley Than Kyaw village tract, where health workers are paying no attention to those patients.

 

In the health center, most of the staffs are Rakhines community who are not facilitating to Rohingya community, said villagers from Alay Than Kyaw.

 

According to sources, mostly, children (1-10 years) have been suffering from diseases such as— chickenpox, fever, and cough and vomiting.

 

However, the Rohingya patients have been taking basic treatment from village quack doctors, said a father of a patient.

The Rohingya people are an ethnic group who practice Islam and speak Rohingya, an Indo-European language of the Eastern Indic branch, closely related to Chittagonian and more distantly to Bengali. The origin of this group of people is disputed with some saying they are indigenous to the state of Rakhine (also known as Arakan, or Rohang in the Rohingya language) in Burma and others contending that they are Muslim migrants who originated in Bengal, latterly Bangladesh, and migrated to Burma during the period of British rule.

The Rohingya are linguistically related to the Indo-Aryan peoples of India and Bangladesh (as opposed to the mainly Sino-Tibetan languages of Burma). As of 2012, about 800,000 Rohingya live in Burma. According to the United Nations, they are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Many Rohingya have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, and to areas along the Thai-Burma border. More than 100,000 Rohingya in Burma continue to live in camps for internally displaced persons, forbidden by authorities from leaving. The Rohingya have received international attention in the wake of the 2012 Rakhine State riots. (T/P08/P04)