Back to Dhaka...but the Rohingyas are still on my mind

The toll of witnessing human suffering is high. I spent a week hearing about the atrocities and seeing the state of the Rohingya in Cox’s bazaar. Just that one week has made it difficult to continue my daily life without thinking about them and wondering what will happen. I think a lot about it especially at night when I get the chance to sleep in a safe and secure home, knowing that food is not scarce. They have spent months, no years witnessing and experiencing human suffering. What must each moment of each day be like for them?

It was hard to leave Cox’s Bazaar knowing there is so much to be done there. It’s been harder still to answer the question of “so, how was it?”  The response, “it was great,” just seems insensitive, saying “it was eye opening” is an understatement. I am left with the comment that it is dissatisfying to those who ask, that my feelings on being there for a week are an incredibly complex. I am glad to have joined such a wonderful group, MedGlobal is a great organization and I think there is a lot of potential to do good work with them. I am saddened and heart broken by what I saw but energized by the willingness of local and international organizations to protect these people. And lastly I am motivated to find out how I can continue to contribute.

I returned to Dhaka with the chance to unwind for two days with family before launching back into the ultrasound teaching sessions which started up today. The group was a motivated one as usual and it struck me again how important the gift of teaching is and how these sessions have the chance to be sustainable in the next few years. Because of my constantly wandering mind, I thought in that instant how this could be applied in a crisis such as that of the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazaar. At current there are a number of organizations that are using the community health worker model as a way to both empower the local community as well as spread valuable education in the areas of health and wellness (or anything for that matter).  The specific example I thought of was in regards to respiratory health. Many of the patients we attended to likely had asthma or COPD, yet inhaler use is difficult to teach and often inhalers are mid-used. Even with spacers, a device that helps with inhaler use and effectiveness, patients still have a very hard time, and that is common in America too. Shown here is a disposable spacer made basically from a paper cup. 

If there was a way to more reliably follow up with these patients and review inhaler technique as well as review their symptoms it is conceivable that these disease processes could be better controlled. Well, the community health workers may be a great group to teach respiratory health, but this is only one example of a multitude of educational campaigns—discussing birth control, control of chronic disease processes such as diabetes or hypertension, hand hygiene etc. I am looking forward to how the NGO community further optimizes the potential of community health workers as I think the possibilities are endless !