Voice of America’s Greta Van Susteren visited Bangladesh’s vast Rohingya refugee camp in June. According to Van Susteren, conditions at the refugee camp are “unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable that anyone could suffer like this.” She adds that the monsoon season has taken a heavy toll on the nearly one million refugees.
During the monsoon season, heavy rains and flooding have devastated makeshift shelters and left water sources contaminated and the residents susceptible to diseases like cholera. Van Susteren says that they’ve been able to vaccinate about half of the people in the camp but “there’s another 480,000 people who haven’t been.”
Van Susteren met with some of the relief workers who have come from all around the world to assist the people of the camp and notes that while they are doing amazing work, there’s just too many people in the camp for aid workers to adequately care for. According to Van Susteren, “This is ethnic cleansing…The world media can’t cure cholera, it can’t reverse what’s happened, but it can use its power and influence to put a spotlight on this crisis.”
Greta Van Susteren’s new show “Plugged In”, which debuted in February, airs Wednesdays at 10:30am on Voice of America and can be streamed live on VOA’s Facebook.