Preliminary data from a nutrition assessment conducted last week at Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar shows a 7.5 per cent prevalence of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition – a rate double that seen among Rohingya child refugees in May 2017, UNICEF said.

"The Rohingya children in the camp – who have survived horrors in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state and a dangerous journey here – are to already caught up in a catastrophe," said UNICEF Bangladesh Representative Edouard Beigbeder. "Those with severe malnutrition are now at risk of dying from an entirely preventable and treatable cause."

UNICEF and partners are treating over 2,000 acutely malnourished children at 15 treatment centres, with six additional centres currently being set up. The agency is also working with health partners to identify and treat diarrhoea and pneumonia, and will be conducting mass vaccination and nutrition screening campaigns this month.

"The humanitarian community needs to be able to do far more to treat and protect these extremely vulnerable children," Mr. Beigbeder said. "For that we need far more attention to the crisis, and far more resources for the response. These children need help right now."