As an international UN Volunteer specialized in communication, Catalin was one of the first people to be sent to Cox’s Bazar to document the response of WHO Bangladesh. “Prior to the escalation of this crisis, there were already established partnerships between WHO, the government and other health partners. With the massive influx of people from Myanmar, strategies had to be adapted to this critical situation,” explains Catalin.

The speed and scale of the influx has resulted in a critical humanitarian emergency, with refugees reliant on humanitarian assistance for food and other life-saving needs. Ashraful Islam is a national UN Volunteer supporting the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in developing women-friendly spaces, gathering data from the field and distributing medical kits. Girun Beyene, international UN volunteer from Sudan is serving with UNFPA in Bangladesh to incorporate disaggregated data into UNFPA Project documents.

Volunteer Sonali Rani Das works as a nurse and has been a member of the mobile medical team since 2011. Currently the team is seeing 200 patients a day, all presenting complaints about the recent catastrophic floods that hit Bangladesh.  We are seeing a lot of women and children. They have problems like skin infections, eye infections, scabies, diarrhoea and asthma. We have even seen snake bites. When I see the children, I take the mother’s blood pressure and check her over too,” she explains.

A Bangladesh Red Crescent mobile medical team has been set up in Bangladesh, and it is run by volunteer Dr. Mohsin Ahmed. He explains that food, water and shelter are the main concern of the people he is seeing, most of whom are women and children.

I was looking at the UNV Bangladesh Facebook page when I noticed that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangladesh was looking for a UN Volunteer to serve as Research Assistant to work on daily media briefings, data entry and standardization, and drafting policy briefs for the Democratic Governance Cluster. Their needs tied directly to my interests and areas of expertise. When UNV contacted me, it was indeed a remarkable day.