UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- New latrines will be constructed in the Rohingya camps and settlements of Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district to provide sanitation coverage to some 250,000 people, averting a major disease outbreak, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Thursday.
UNICEF and the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief of Bangladesh agreed that the Bangladesh Armed Forces Division will construct 10,000 latrines in Cox's Bazar as quickly as possible at a total cost of 1.5 million U.S. dollars.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees crossed border into Bangladesh in the past few weeks to flee violence in Rakhine state in Myanmar.
"There are already reports of water-borne diseases from the health centers in the camps," said Edouard Beigbeder, the UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh, who signed a work plan with the ministry on Wednesday.
"Disease outbreak is a real and present danger for the camp dwellers and host population. We immediately need to step up sanitation coverage there," added Beigbeder.
UNICEF will contribute financial as well as technical support to the ministry in this public health undertaking, including water, sanitation and hygiene sector partners, which will provide locations for each set of 5-rings model latrines.
The latrines, at an estimated cost of 147 U.S. dollars each, will also be regularly disinfected through spraying chlorine solution so that these do not become sources of contamination.
UNICEF, the Department of Public Health and Engineering of Bangladesh, and water and sanitation sector partners are also implementing an accelerated program of building latrines for the refugees in the camps in two sub-districts of Cox's Bazar district.
