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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Rebecca Root in Cox's Bazar

Threadbare facilities, high mortality, cats in the corridors: the realities of life for new Rohingya mothers in Cox’s Bazar

A midwife checks on a newborn baby lying in a cot
Midwife Sumana Akter checks on a newborn baby inside the Friendship hospital in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. In some areas of the camp, maternal mortality is 44% higher than the Bangladesh average Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom for the Guardian

It is mid-afternoon on a Wednesday and Toyoba Begum, 37, is sitting upright at the end of her hospital bed, the second in a row of eight. Dressed in a beige tunic and canary yellow trousers, a belly recovery belt clasped around her stomach, she watches her two-day-old daughter sleeping under a fleece blanket.

She says she feels a great sense of relief that her fourth baby arrived safely into the world. That was not the case three years ago when Begum laboured for six days. Her third baby was eventually delivered by caesarean section but did not survive.

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