Resurging dengue wave in Bangladeshi Rohingya refugee camps: an alarming burden for healthcare concern

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority that live primarily in Myanmar's Arakan province. Due to various internal problems, the Rohingya group has been migrating to Bangladesh in large numbers since the 1970s. Most Rohingya refugees have found a home in Bangladesh. Political and religious unrest in 2017 led to an estimated 6 500 000 new arrivals in Bangladesh1. The disease known as dengue fever is the most widespread and important virus spread by mosquitoes worldwide. Dengue fever is caused by the flavivirus DENV and is spread by the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes2. The spread of dengue fever is not limited to Asian countries. Especially after COVID-19, dengue caused a domino effect in national health policy. In several parts of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, dengue infections reached epidemic proportions in 2022. There were 3 766 153 cases of dengue in the world in December 20223,4, with 3582 fatalities. Both the dengue epidemic and the Rohingya crisis, two of Bangladesh's most pressing issues, must be contained lest they balloon out of control. The Rohingya, especially the emigrant Rohingya, are putting significant strain on our country's development policy. Both the health and business sectors are beginning to outsmart humans. Dengue fever is on the rise, which puts additional stress on the healthcare system even as the population grows. The Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar have been named the country's second dengue 'hotspot,' following the capital of Dhaka4. When it comes to spreading information about dengue, linguistic and cultural divides are the most significant obstacles. Due to the encampment's location on a downward-sloping hillside, they had to rely on collecting and storing water for extended periods of time5. Dengue is mostly spread by the use of stagnant water, such as that found in pots. The principal causes of dengue in the Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, are climate change, high rains, the density of the population, a lack of water supplies, a lack of space for medical facilities, etc6. As a comparison, in 2019, over 100 000 individuals were hospitalized due to dengue fever, and roughly 179 people lost their lives to the mosquito-borne disease. In July 2022, 1277 people were hospitalized due to dengue fever, and seven of them ended up dying. Prior to this deathless June 2022 report, 737 patients were documented7. In Cox's Bazar, the Rohingya population has already seen 1066 cases of dengue illnesses in 20236. Due to the poor hygiene standards, the Rohingya refugee camps are ideal breeding grounds for dengue. The Rohingya have a high risk of contracting the disease because of their low levels of knowledge about it and the lack of timely detection of the disease in the camps. The government, NGOs, and Rohingya inhabitants all have to come forward to tackle dengue. Fogging must be ensured regularly in hotspots. Awareness must be increased through proper workshops. Dengue tests must be ensured, and there must be an extra center for dengue patients. Sources of water must be properly managed, and all sources of stagnant water must be abolished. During outdoor activities, it is important to take precautions, such as wearing long sleeves and pants and applying repellent to any exposed skin or clothing. Insecticide spray products for the home and mosquito coils are two methods of indoor protection. Since it mostly affects the poor, it has been ignored for a long time and receives inadequate funding for study and development in the medical sciences worldwide. As a result, we must make urgent, coordinated efforts to rein in these underappreciated endemic and sporadic diseases before they spiral out of control. Last but not least, proper sanitation, hospitalization as well as mass awareness must be ensured to tackle the dengue crisis. Ethics approval As a short article (correspondence) analyzing secondary sources, ethical approval involving patients was not applicable to patients. However, ethical approval in our department (Sociology) under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University, Gopalganj 8100, Bangladesh, has been approved. Consent Not applicable. Sources of funding This work did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Author contribution M.A.-M.: conceived the idea, conceptualized the theme, wrote the paper, and writing – review and editing; A.K.: supervised the team, review, and editing; N.I.U.: collected and gathered information and writing – original draft; P.K.D.: analyzed the drafts and edited the manuscript. Conflicts of interest disclosure The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Research registration unique identifying number (UIN) Name of the registry: not applicable. Unique identifying number or registration ID: not applicable. Hyperlink to your specific registration (must be publicly accessible and will be checked): not applicable. Guarantor Md. Al-Mamun: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4133-757X. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned, externally peer-reviewed. Data availability statement Data sharing does not apply to this article, as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.