Bangladeshi troops will deliver aid to desperate Rohingya refugees massed in Cox's Bazar, authorities said Friday.
The relief effort for the estimated nearly 400,000 Rohingya who have arrived at the frontier town in the last three weeks has been ad hoc and plagued by disorganisation as local aid workers are overwhelmed by the human tide.
With fears mounting that those in most need are not receiving basic aid -- despite handouts by local volunteers -- Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the army would be deployed to distribute aid sent by donor nations.
Lt Col Rashidul Hasan on Friday said the orders had reached the crisis zone.
"We've got the directive that the army would receive relief materials sent by foreign nations at the airport and take it to Cox's Bazar," he said.It was not immediately clear how quickly food and medicine would reach the refugees, many of whom are huddled on roadsides and patches of land.
But the World Health Organisation and Unicef said they would launch vaccination campaigns on Saturday against measles, rubella and polio, targeting 150,000 newly arrived children.
Unicef spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said they were also screening children for malnutrition.
Last week, there were more than "1,100 unaccompanied and separated children, and we estimate that those numbers will rise sharply", she added.
Around one third of Myanmar's Rohingya population have fled northern Rakhine state for Bangladesh since August 25, when raids by Rohingya militants triggered the massive military campaign.
The United Nations has warned that the rest of the population may soon follow, deepening the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Bangladesh where some 10,000 refugees are arriving daily.
Relief workers in Bangladesh have struggled to manage the growing humanitarian crisis amid an acute shortage of shelters and supplies.
"We have to estimate the worst case scenario" where all Rohingya flee Rakhine, said Mohammed Abdiker Mohamud, a director of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN's migration agency.
"Unless a political solution is found there is a possibility that the entire Rohingya community may come to Bangladesh."
There were previously an estimated 1.1m Rohingya in Myanmar, where the stateless group was denied citizenship and subject to a myriad of restrictions on their livelihoods.