Massive diphtheria outbreak among Rohingya refugees: lessons learnt

Rahman, Ridwanur; Islam, Khaleda

doi:10.1093/jtm/tay122

Cited by 61 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…This is because one of the aims of this survey was to crudely gauge the refugees' prior access to preventive medicine rather than establishing a full immunisation record. Unfortunately, this suggests that up to 16% of individuals may not have received any immunisations in the past, including those in the WHO Expanded Program on Immunisation schedule, leading to a significant risk of both individual and community vulnerability to disease outbreaks as have occurred with diphtheria, measles and varicella [12,13,15]. However, our results are more favourable than those of other recent surveys that demonstrated 43% of children under the age of four had not received any doses of an injectable vaccine in Myanmar [2], and that only 23% of Rohingya children under five years of age had received a measles vaccine [10].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have noted high rates of malnutrition and low immunisation coverage among Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar who, thus, remain susceptible to infections including gastroenteritis, acute respiratory infections and acute jaundice syndromes [7][8][9][10][11]. Following the last mass migration, a large diphtheria outbreak and varicella and measles outbreaks have occurred, and cholera remains a constant threat [12][13][14][15]. Furthermore, Rohingya refugees suffer from a wide range of acute and chronic health conditions [7,14], including musculoskeletal and mental health problems that can be difficult to detect, assess and manage in this vulnerable population [16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Rapid Assessment of Health Literacy and Health Status of Rohingya Refugees Living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Following the August 2017 Exodus from Myanmar: A Cross-Sectional Study

Rahman¹,

Faiz

Nu³

et al. 2020

TropicalMed

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Background: A survey was conducted among Rohingya refugees to assess their overall health literacy and health status. Methods: A questionnaire was developed to conduct face to face interviews among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh in November–December 2017. Families were selected using convenience sampling from four large refugee camps. Results: Primary respondents aged 10–90 (median 32) years, 56% male, representing 1634 families were interviewed and provided data of themselves and 6268 additional family members, 4163 (66.4%) of whom were children aged <18 years. Of all, only 736 (45%) primary respondents knew how to appropriately treat diarrhoea, 882 (54%) relied on unqualified village “doctors” for treatment, 547 (33.5%) reported a family member suffering injuries in the previous six months, with 8% (42/547) of injuries fatal. One hundred and ninety two (11.8%) primary respondents also reported deaths within their family in the preceding 12 months, with the majority (70% [134/192]) occurring in males, and 44% (85/192) of all deaths were claimed to be homicidal. Conclusion: This survey highlights overall poor health literacy, limited access to qualified health care, and a high rate of injuries and assaults among Rohingyas. However, these data come from an anecdotal survey that excluded some sensitive but important questions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rapid Assessment of Health Literacy and Health Status of Rohingya Refugees Living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Following the August 2017 Exodus from Myanmar: A Cross-Sectional Study

Rahman¹,

Faiz

Nu³

et al. 2020

TropicalMed

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…There have been several recent reports of outbreaks and newspaper articles highlighting the seriousness of the present situation, which emphasizes the role of the public, healthcare workers, and governments in order to control and prevent the spread of diphtheria [19][20]. A local newspaper published (in the Telegu language) a picture of parents and relatives carrying and transporting a pediatric patient to a better medical facility whose condition worsened with suspected diphtheria, as shown in Figure 7.…”

Section: Indian Scenario Of Diphtheriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Diphtheria or Streptococcal Pharyngitis: A Case Report Highlighting the Diagnostic Dilemma in the Post-vaccination Era

Kandi¹,

Vaish²

2019

Cureus

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Diphtheria is an acute, highly infectious, toxigenic, and vaccine-preventable disease that commonly affects children under 12 years of age. The incidences of diphtheria have significantly dropped due to vaccination with diphtheria, pertussis, tetani (DPT). Recently, there is an increasing trend in reports of diphtheria throughout the world and specifically from developing countries. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, more than 80% of the global diphtheria cases in the post-vaccination era were from India and Indonesia. This could probably be signaling its re-emergence, which may be attributed to several factors that include incomplete immunization. Pharyngitis caused by group A Streptococcus is most frequently seen in children and can be clinically similar in presentation to diphtheria. We share our experience of managing a case of an eight-year-old child, who was clinically suspected to be suffering from diphtheria.

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“…There are several negative implications of refugee movement as observed within the Rohingya population. For example, studies on Rohingya refugees have focused on communicable epidemic diseases (Alam et al, 2019), mental health Majeed, 2019;Shaw, Pillai, & Ward, 2019), outbreak of diphtheria (Rahman & Islam, 2019), maternal health services (Khan & DeYoung, 2019), vaccination delivery (Jalloh et al, 2019), etc. Consequently, health facilities for Rohingya population in Bangladesh are of utmost importance for their well-being.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine learning for predicting landslide risk of Rohingya refugee camp infrastructure

Ahmed

Firoze

Rahman

2020

Journal of Information and Telecommunication

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Since the dawn of human civilization, forced migration scenarios have been witnessed in different regions and populations, and is still present in the twenty-first century. The current largest population of stateless refugees in the world, the Rohingya people, reside in the southeastern border region of Bangladesh. Due to rapid expansion of refugee camps and lack of suitable locations, a large proportion of the infrastructure are at risk of landslides. This study aims to use machine learning for predicting landslide risk of camp infrastructure using geospatial features. Four supervised classification algorithms have been employed viz., (i) Logistic Regression (LR), (ii) Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), (iii) Gradient Boosted Trees (GBT) and (iv) Random Forest (RF) and applied on preprocessing varied versions of features. Results show that RF achieves accuracy of 76.19% and AUC of 0.76 on un-scaled features which is higher than all other algorithms. The applications of the study reside in refugee management and landslide susceptibility mapping of Rohingya camps, which can both potentially save refugee lives and serve as a case study for global applications.

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Massive diphtheria outbreak among Rohingya refugees: lessons learnt

Cited by 61 publications

References 4 publications

A Rapid Assessment of Health Literacy and Health Status of Rohingya Refugees Living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Following the August 2017 Exodus from Myanmar: A Cross-Sectional Study

A Rapid Assessment of Health Literacy and Health Status of Rohingya Refugees Living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Following the August 2017 Exodus from Myanmar: A Cross-Sectional Study

Diphtheria or Streptococcal Pharyngitis: A Case Report Highlighting the Diagnostic Dilemma in the Post-vaccination Era

Machine learning for predicting landslide risk of Rohingya refugee camp infrastructure

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