Zohora Khatun is a midwife
in the world’s largest refugee camp.
Here in southern Bangladesh
health conditions are poor among Rohingya refugees
and childbirth poses severe risks.
On any given week
Zohora helps one to four women
give birth with her bare hands
and a few basic tools.
This massive tent city in southern Bangladesh
is home to more than 900,000 Rohingya Muslims.
More than half are children.
At least 100 babies are born each day
in inadequate sanitary conditions,
most of them in tents just like this one.
Zohora helped her sister in law
give birth two days ago.
Two years ago,
Zohora’s life took a major turn.
The Myanmar government and military
has persecuted the Rohingya Muslim minority for decades.
But in 2017,
an escalation in violence
forced the mass exodus of 700,000 people.
Zohora and her family were among them.
Zohora’s town was one of many
that the military burned down.
They also killed many civilians,
which may amount to crimes against humanity,
according to the UN.
Back home,
Zohora lived in a rural community
of a few hundred people.
She had land and her own garden.
Now she lives in a camp
made up of makeshift tents
with hardly any space to walk.
Her life has changed
and the demand for her midwife services multiplied.
Zohora is visiting her niece Nur
who is nine months pregnant with her second child.
Nur hasn’t been feeling well
and there is only so much Zohora can do
with limited resources.
Nur gave birth two weeks later.
Her child was stillborn.
Last year
nearly 48.000 children were born inside the camp.
UNICEF estimates
only 18% of those children
were born in health centers.
Shefah Rahman is a physician
at the Doctors Without Borders clinic
just outside the camp.
The women who come to us,
they have this fear that
they will not be treated as they expect
because this [fear] can be related to their past.
In Myanmar,
the Rohingya are denied citizenship,
proper education and health care.
So women here are not used to hospitals
and have reason not to trust institutions.
When they come to the hospital,
the babies are already very sick
or the women are already very sick.
So their mortality rate is high
and the prognosis is not good.
Pregnant women and newborns
are especially vulnerable.
Common ailments include severe dehydration,
infections, eclampsia, hypertension and diabetes.
But despite all these challenges
most women choose to give birth at home.
Part of being a midwife
is being present in the lives of new moms.
Her advice on self-care
and motherhood
is fundamental to them.
Providing for children is a real issue.
About one in four
between the ages of six months and five years
is malnourished.
Many don’t have access to clean water,
healthy food, education or basic infrastructure.
The refugee camp is transforming
from a massive temporary tent city into a giant slum,
and that shift comes with consequences.
Intimate partner violence and drug use are on the rise
as the camp becomes more densely populated.
This is increasingly becoming an unsafe environment
for young girls and women,
many of whom are victims of sexual violence.
Zohora and her family survive on roughly ten dollars per day
and the rice and lentils
they get from the World Food Program.
Zohora never asks for money
when she delivers a child.
If she gets any payment
it’s in the form of a small donation
that she uses to put fresh food on the table.
Zohora was called when 25 years old Hafsa Bibi
went into labor.
Hafsa Bibi just gave birth to her third child.
Zohora delivered all three of them.
As part of their tradition,
the local imam comes to pray for the child.
In the second part of our series on refugees,
we head to Africa’s largest refugee camp.
Dadaab, it looks like an open prison
where you can not go out of it.
Thousands of children have been born in Dadaab
since it was built in 1991
and most have never experienced life outside
this arid tent city in eastern Kenya.