Shaheen Mollah

Six months ago, 52-year-old constable Md Iqbal started working in the traffic department of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).

It was around 5 o’clock in the morning.

Basudeb, who hails from a remote village in Patuakhali, thought he had carved out a comfortable life for himself and his family in Dhaka.

At Mirpur’s Mazar Road, three to four vans can be seen running an off-beat food business. Throughout the week, especially on the weekends, sellers set up shop with an offering of delicacies, all at dirt-cheap price.

People from across the country flock to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for treatment. According to hospital authorities, around 4,000 patients remain admitted to this 2,600-bed public hospital on a regular basis.  

When Jibon Sarker (not his real name) joined the police force as a constable about 10 years ago, he took it for a life-changing job. In many ways, it is; but not for the right reasons.

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.

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.

Fourteen-year-old Shahabul Alam never thought a day would come where he would be impatient to get back into the classroom.

There is a kind of enforced disappearance where a person is picked up or abducted, vanishes into thin air and is never heard from again.

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.

Fatema Begum of Kalyanpur slum, locally known as the “Kalyanpur Pora Bosti”, got married to Md Mohsin in March, this year.

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.

When Covid patient Rokeya Sultana was fighting for her life in the ICU of a private hospital last week, her son Mamunur Rashid was found frantically talking over the phone with someone trying to convince that person to buy a piece of land from him.

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

Rawhide traders running small-scale operations are in trouble as they cannot sell their salt-cured hides at prices of their expectations due to influential traders seeking to slow the pace of purchases at this moment.

The bodies of 24 of the workers who died in the Hashem Foods factory fire last month were handed over to their families yesterday.

Ishtiaq Ahmed, the top drug lord of Mohammadpur Geneva Camp, who was hiding for a long period, died in a hospital in India after being infected from Covid-19.

Dengue patients have been struggling to find treatment at the public hospitals in the capital as the major facilities are burdened with Covid-19 patients.

Wednesday was a nightmare for Shipra Baidya and her family.