A study published this month in BMJ Global Health reveals that child malnutrition among Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh has risen dramatically over the past seven years and continues to far exceed WHO emergency thresholds despite sustained international humanitarian aid. A critical driver is the erosion of food assistance purchasing power caused by inflation. As the real value of food e-vouchers has steadily declined, so too has the nutritional status of children in the camps, with male children and toddlers during monsoon season bearing a disproportionate burden. These findings carry urgent global implications: in protracted humanitarian crises worldwide, fixed-value food aid systems that fail to account for inflation may be quietly undermining the very outcomes they are designed to protect. 

This work was led by Dr. Ruhul Abid. a Professor at the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University student researcher Yui Miura, and Dr. Jason T. Tsichlis, a graduate of Brown University currently at Northwestern University. The comprehensive study was supported through the clinical infrastructure of HAEFA (Health and Education for All), a nonprofit founded by Dr. Abid whose global humanitarian mission has long been driven by Brown students, faculty, and alumni committed to health equity for the world's most vulnerable populations.