Baby boom at Rohingya refugee camp

There's a baby boom at the Cox's Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh as tens of thousands of pregnant women who fled Myanmar give birth.

If you thought assembling a cot from IKEA was tricky, try getting baby furniture in a refugee camp.

Janat Ara, 22, gave birth to Mohammad Arshat, four weeks ago.

He's soundly asleep in a homemade hammock hanging from the ceiling of his family's bamboo and tarp shelter in the buzzing refugee camp. It's fashioned from a rice bag, sticks and fabric straps.

Janat was nine months pregnant with Mohammad, her third child, when she and her family escaped from Myanmar to Bangladesh two months ago.

They are part of a still-growing exodus of some 646,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar since a military crackdown in August.

Villagers were massacred, homes slashed and burned, women gang-raped and babies thrown on fires and burnt alive.

Janat's family endured a seven-day barefoot journey through the jungle to make it to the camps an hour away from the Bangladesh holiday resort town of Cox's Bazar.

The former rice farmer lamented she only had the clothes on her back when she arrived in Bangladesh. There hadn't been enough time to pack any baby things because their home was burnt.

Her husband was unable to carry her when she was too tired to walk because his arms were full with their two other children, both aged under five.

"I fell down many times during the travel and my legs swelled up, I thought they were broken," she told AAP through an interpreter.

At one point attackers whacked her pregnant belly and she was in so much pain she had to crawl along the ground. Fortunately, the assault did not affect the baby's health.

She gave birth in her family's tent in the camp and was severely ill in the immediate aftermath but has now regained her strength.

There's a bit of a baby boom in the camps as tens of thousands of pregnant women escaping Myanmar give birth.

Exact numbers are unclear because many give birth in their tents without any medical help.

Save the Children's maternal health nurses make regular 'house calls' to find newborns, check on mums' progress and provide breastfeeding advice.

Births in the refugee camps are basically the equivalent of being born in no-man's land, with the babies deemed stateless because neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh will recognise them.

Plus there are practical dangers - newborns are particularly vulnerable to diseases until they have their vaccinations.

The World Health Organisation is scrambling to contain a diphtheria outbreak and estimates 722 probable cases and nine deaths between November 12 and December 10.

Aid groups and governments are ramping up a vaccination program to target 255,000 kids aged from six weeks to six years.

* AAP reporter Lisa Martin and photographer Tracey Nearmy travelled to Bangladesh with help from Save the Children.

* Donate to Save the Children's Rohingya Crisis Appeal at www.savethechildren.org.au/rohingya or by calling 1800 76 00 11.


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Source: AAP


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