UAE medical team in Bangladesh to help Rohingya refugees

Emirati volunteers will operate a mobile clinic to alleviate shortage of care in crowded camps

Rohingya refugee children wait anxiously outside a food distribution center at Palong Khali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on November 17, 2017. Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

A team of Emirati medical volunteers has arrived in Bangladesh to treat Rohingya refugees.

The team will operate a mobile clinic for those in need, especially children and the elderly, under the supervision of Emirati and Bangladeshi doctors, the state news agency Wam reported on Friday.

Dr Adel Al Shamri, chief executive of the Zayed Giving Initiative, said the campaign is part of UAE efforts to assist Rohingya who have fled hostilities in Myanmar and face deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Bangladeshi refugee camps.

The campaign is a joint effort by the Zayed Giving Initiative, Dar Al Ber Association, Sharjah Charity House and the UAE-German Hospitals Group, in partnership with local agencies, Wam said.

The mobile clinic was flown to Bangladesh by flydubai, it said.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late August, when the Myanmar military launched a wide-ranging crackdown in response to a string of attacks by insurgents.

The number of arrivals, most of them women and children, has overwhelmed Bangladeshi authorities as well as international aid agencies.

On Saturday, foreign ministers from Asia and Europe will meet in Bangladesh to discuss international support to help the government cope with the crisis.

The Bangladesh foreign minister A H Mahmood Ali is scheduled to take the ministers from Germany, Sweden and Japan, as well as the European Union diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, to the border town of Cox's Bazar on Sunday to see the camps.

The UN children's agency Unicef estimates that about 25,000 refugee children are suffering from severe malnutrition.