CPI Trains Rohingya Rescue Teams as Monsoon Rains Sweep Cox’s Bazar

The precarious shelters that house the estimated 900,000 Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, offer scant resistance against the monsoon rains now sweeping this region. Landslides and flash floods are significant and ever-present threats facing these communities seeking refugee from communal violence in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. As part of wider disaster preparedness efforts, Community Partners International (CPI) is training and supporting a network of Rohingya Community Health Volunteers (CHVs), embedded in refugee communities throughout Cox’s Bazar, to provide safe rescue and first response services in emergencies.

Between May 30 and June 2, CPI held two workshops to train 44 CHVs in basic rescue techniques. These CHVs provide the first line of basic health care services to fellow refugees in four refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar - Kutupalong (Camp 1W), Hakimpara (Camp 14), Jamtoli Camp (15), and Potibonia Camp (16). During the workshops, participants learned how to lift patients safely, take precautions to ensure spinal protection, correctly use stretchers, and practice different types of drags and carries to safely move patients during emergencies.

CPI also equipped the CHVs with rescue kits that include life jackets and throwlines for flood rescue, stretchers, head torches, and basic first aid supplies so that they can provide rescue and first response services, day or night, to their fellow refugees across Cox’s Bazar.