Helemul Alam

Almost 60 percent garbage collecting vehicles of Dhaka South City Corporation are driven by contractual or proxy drivers, said a DSCC source.

A total of 120 brand new, green-coloured buses will ply Ghatarchar-Kanchpur route under a single authority on a pilot basis from December 1, as part of the government’s bus route rationalisation initiative.

It was around 5 o’clock in the morning.

Under normal circumstances, November’s dry weather was supposed to cause the Aedes mosquito population to decline. But this year, around 150 dengue patients are still being hospitalised daily, illustrating a concerning picture of the vector-borne disease.

When Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) inaugurated renovation work for the capital’s Osmani Udyan back in January 2018, it had promised to complete it in 10 months.

Nasirakanda’s Moharram Ali has to visit the hospital at least twice every month to have his leg checked. It got damaged severely due to a road accident nine months back.

Sixty-five-year-old Kulsum left her home at Postogola yesterday morning to visit her ailing sister living in Shyampur. She, accompanied by her niece Jahanara, took a rickshaw, which got on Postogola-Chashara road, a thoroughfare full of potholes.

With the country’s temperature remaining abnormally high over the last two months, the number of patients suffering from different infectious diseases has gone up, with children being the worst sufferers and leaving hospitals struggling with an influx of treatment seekers.

Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) has taken up an elaborate plan to construct an eco-park using the retention areas at the capital’s Kalyanpur, a large part of which are currently encroached.

Dengue became endemic in the country in 2000, but the government is yet to put in place an automated system that comes up with the exact number of cases, crucial to get a clear picture of the situation.

In a city already devoid of adequate playgrounds, there is a field in Old Dhaka’s Gendaria area that has not only stood the test of time but also remains a testament to the capital’s sporting legacy.

Though the spread of dengue outside Dhaka started comparatively late, the growing number of cases shows that the situation may soon take a turn for the worse if necessary measures are not taken immediately to curb further spread, said experts and entomologists.

Experts have expressed fear that the dengue fever may spread further in the country this year if the authorities concerned do not take appropriate measures before reopening educational institutions.

Amid the rise in dengue cases, the government on Monday dedicated six hospitals for treating dengue patients. However, it has been four days, but only two hospitals have started treatment till yesterday.

Nine-month-old Ismail has been undergoing treatment at Dhaka Shishu Hospital for around two months, and around a month and a half ago, underwent surgery for his brain tumour.

Dhaka Shishu Hospital yesterday gave treatment to 80 dengue infected children admitted to the facility, the highest ever at a time.

Leaving a 40-day-old baby behind, Tabassum Shahirin died of dengue yesterday morning while undergoing treatment at Enam Medical College Hospital.

The absence of an effective mechanism to check Aedes mosquitoes, including proper and timely surveillance by the city corporations, is mainly to blame for dengue cases spiralling in the capital and elsewhere in the country, experts say.

Thanks to the pandemic, the animals in Bangladesh National Zoo in Dhaka have had a blissful year, spared as they were the usual chaos, sound of vuvuzelas and prodding from curious onlookers.

After months of stalling, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) yesterday finally announced that 25 people died of dengue at different hospitals across the country this year.