Standing next to newly erected tents clustered on a hillside, Abdul Malek explains one of the biggest problems facing the more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled violence in Myanmar for the relative safety of Bangladesh.
In the past week, however, a new latrine was installed by the U.N. refugee agency.
To help combat a potential health emergency, aid groups are hurriedly installing thousands of tube wells for clean drinking water and as many latrines as they can.
Asif Saleh, a senior director with the Bangladeshi relief organization BRAC, said it was targeting installation of 15,000 latrines by Oct. 15.
And a lot of the diseases spread from open defecation and not having access to clean water.
Vivian Tan, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in an email that to date the organization and its partners have installed 500 latrines serving some 25,000 people, mainly in the now-extended section of the Kutupalong camp.
An additional safeguard for controlling the spread of cholera is vaccination.
With support from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health rolled out an ambitious oral cholera vaccination campaign on Tuesday at many of the settlement sites in the Cox’s Bazar sub-districts of Ukhia and Tekhnaf.
For Malek and his neighbors, the installation of the new latrine helped, but not everyone is using it.
When asked where men go, he gestured towards the hills and fields.