INTERVIEW: Gwenola Seroux. MSF’s assistance to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (ENG)

#01 What are conditions like in the camp?
#02 What is MSF doing?
#03 Could you tell us about some of the risks MSF has identified?
#04 What’s happening now?

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INTERVIEW: Gwenola Seroux. Rohingya in Bangladesh - Nov 2017

INTERVIEW: Gwenola Seroux. MSF’s assistance to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (INT)

INTERVIEW: Gwenola Seroux. L’action de MSF pour les Rohingyas réfugiés au Bangladesh (FR)

Subt. French

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Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF214848

Date taken / Date Recorded 03/11/2017 12:00 AM

Country Bangladesh

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Photographer / videographer / producer Mohammad Ghannam

Usage Rights (MSF) MSF Fundraising, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 3m14s

Maximum Size 1920px × 1080px 322.33 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist Gwenola Seroux, head of emergency programmes at MSF
MSF’s assistance to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

#01 What are conditions like in the camp?
The camp has got bigger and bigger since the first refugees arrived on August 25. 600,000 people are living there now.
The Rohingyas have managed to make quite big huts for themselves. The camp got organised really quickly, with lots of water points – hand pumps – fairly evenly distributed. But unfortunately the water that’s being pumped isn’t clean. People have dug holes for open-air latrines. Many NGOs have also being digging and the camp is full of holes and latrines. But as they’re not deep enough, they’re overflowing. We’re already seeing signs of contamination.
The major problem is ensuring people have access to our facilities. So in such a big, densely populated camp our first challenge was, and still is, to find places suitable for our health facilities.

#02 What is MSF doing?
What we need most is to give people access to our medical consultations and set up facilities so that we can admit patients we see for inpatient treatment.
We have two consultation centres in one area of the camp. We hope to be able to reach out to around 150,000 Rohingyas because the Ministry of Health’s hospitals near ours are totally overwhelmed. MSF has set up hospitals already but we’re putting up more to be able to provide round-the-clock care. We’re mainly going to focus on paediatric treatment for malnourished children. We’ll have emergency rooms and we also want to be able to assist mothers in labour.

#03 Could you tell us about some of the risks MSF has identified?
There’s the risk of epidemics — there’s already an outbreak of measles. In recent weeks, during my visit, we saw lots of cases arriving from all the camps. There’s also the risk of water-related epidemics, such as diarrhoeas. Cholera poses a real threat, as does shigellosis, which is bloody diarrhoea. We’re seeing people with these diseases. We’re working not only on a system to monitor cases but also on improving water quality in the camp.

#04 What’s happening now?
Rohingya refugees are still crossing the border in search of safety. They’re mostly women, children and the elderly who’ve already spent 10 days at least walking through Burma. Our teams are monitoring and assisting people on the border who are exhausted and really vulnerable. They require immediate care

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