The Issues
Why HAEFA’s health interventions target ready-made garment (RMG) factory workers and Rohingya refugees
HAEFA believes that healthcare is a human right and works to make medical services accessible to populations who are marginalized, oppressed, and underserved. HAEFA primarily works with Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar district and with ready-made garment (RMG) factory workers in Bangladesh.
Current data on garment factory employees:
65% of the workers are female
2% of the workers have respiratory disorders
3% of the workers are diabetic and 8% are pre-diabetic
7% of the workers are hypertensive
RMG Factory Workers
Garment factories maintain notoriously unsafe working conditions which can result in a myriad of health consequences for employees. Factory work includes exposure to many occupational health hazards, including respiratory symptoms and hearing impairment. Employees work long hours in harsh conditions, and often do not have access to quality healthcare. Therefore, many chronic diseases can go unnoticed while they are simultaneously exacerbated by these conditions. These health outcomes could be easily prevented with proper ventilation, better lighting, mandatory use of protective equipment, and regular medical checkups. HAEFA works to address factory workers’ lack of regular healthcare through its implementation of a regular screening and treatment program.
Rohingya Refugees
2017 marked the start of the greatest exodus of Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, from Myanmar, precipitated by atrocities against the Rohingya people committed by the Burmese military. In a response to alleged Rohingya insurgent attacks, the army began a brutal slaughter of the Rohingya Muslims on August 25th, 2017. Up to 400 villages were burnt to the ground, and thousands of Rohingya were killed, raped, and tortured. The attacks were so atrocious that the crisis was called “fastest-growing refugee emergency in the world today” by the United Nations.
The Rohingya sought refuge in nearby nations, and the majority settled in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, on the western border of Myanmar, where camps had already sheltered Rohingya refugees for decades. In 2017, 690,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh immediately following the attacks by the Burmese military, with the largest Rohingya camp in Kutupalong hosting 400,000 refugees. There are now over one million Rohingya refugees in the camps in Bangladesh, all of whom are living in close quarters in temporary shelters in an area prone to flooding and landslides.
The Myanmar Citizenship Act of 1982 stripped the Rohingya people of their citizenship, denying them access to healthcare and basic rights, and essentially making the Rohingya people stateless. NGOs working in the refugee camps often focus on treating acute infectious diseases such as diarrhea, fever, and cough. However, treating this population for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension and diabetes and chronic infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) is a critical and overlooked element of their healthcare, especially given the total denial of healthcare for the past 47 years. The need for patient follow-up and a longitudinal patient tracking system in the refugee camps is often unmet due to the difficulty of working in such a resource-limited environment.
