Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday renewed her call to the international community for continuing its pressure on Myanmar to take back their Rohingya nationals as regional chief of World Health Organisaiton (WHO-SEARO) called on her.
“Bangladesh has given shelter to over one million Rohingya people on humanitarian grounds . . . but international pressures on Myanmar must continue for their repatriation,” premier’s press secretary Ihsanul Karim told a media briefing quoting her as saying.\
Sheikh Hasina said her government was particularly in touch with five neighbouring countries having borders with Myanmar to resolve the crisis.
Sheikh Hasina, he said, told WHO-SEAROregional director Poonam Khetrapal Singh that the Rohingya issue required Bangladesh to engage, among other resources, some 28,000 manpower to work round-the- clock for their management and services.
The premier said her government carried out the biometric registration of the forcibly displaced Myanmar people as they crossed into Bangladesh to evade atrocities in their homeland and issued them identity cards so that they could be identified easily for repatriation.
Khetrapal Singh highly appreciated Bangladesh's response to the Rohingya crisis saying “Bangladesh government is doing a great job” and assured her of WHO assistance in providing them vaccination and other medical services.
She estimated the number of displaced Rohingyas to be higher than the entire population of Bhutan and called their management a “gigantic task”.
But the WHO official simultaneously feared that the Rohingyas would be exposed to serious health condition including water borne diseases and sanitation problems in the coming monsoon season worsening the crisis.
She requested the government to continue its immunisation programmes to negate the impending health crisis.
The premier's press secretary said the issue of autism also came up for discussion and the WHO regional chief praised Prime Minister's daughter and Chairperson of Bangladesh National Advisory Committee for Autism and Neurodevelopment Disorders Saima Wazed Hossain for her role in creating awareness on autism globally.
She highly appreciated the prime minister for her dynamic leadership as well as for Bangladesh's development particularly on flood control saying the country is an example in the world on the issue.
Khetrapal Singh also lauded Bangladesh's achievement on health and sanitation and said its achievement in reducing child mortality and maternal mortality rate is commended globally.
The premier said her government set up community clinics across the country to reach healthcare services to the people's doorsteps.
"Such initiative was a vision of Bangabandhu," Sheikh Hasina said.
Saima Wazed Hossain, PM's Principal Secretary Nojibur Rahman and Health Secretary Sirajul Haque Khan were present on the occasion.
Source:BSS