M. Kamruzzaman Shadhin :
The Article, 18(1), 18A and 32 of the Constitution of Bangladesh expressed about the health rights of citizens and protection of wildlife as well as personal liberty. But the mitigation or control of pandemic is covered by State’s different legal provisions and legislations. The most important legislation ”Communicable Diseases (Prevention, Control, and Eradication) Act- 2018 is now dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, and this legislation is the replaced old colonial law, the Epidemic Diseases Act-1897. The Disaster Management Act-2012 is also an important legislation in the health emergency time. Another legislation the Mobile Court Act-2009 that is empowered the executive magistrates to hold summary trials under the offences of the Communicable Diseases Act- 2018. The section 269, 270 and 271 of the Bangladesh Penal Code-1860 plays a vital role also against the pandemic.
But the above legal provisions have some deficiencies in the following way: (1) It fails to classify different kinds of diseases and levels of severity. (2) It did not describe about the demarcation zone and containment process. (3) There is not mentioned what will be the role of local governments activities in the health emergency time. (4) It was not mentioned about the drug and vaccines regulation in the epidemic time. Another problem is, there is no comprehensive national public health law in Bangladesh yet.
Bangladesh has a healthcare system that lacks reliability, responsiveness and empathy, and that has already been proved inadequate to deliver proper health care to the public on many occasions. Three major reasons are responsible for the deteriorating health care system: (a) Poor governance and corruption, (b) Inadequate healthcare facilities, and (c) Weak public health communication.
The government declared public holidays for 10 days from the date of 23rd March 2020 without imposing any restriction on public transport and public movement. As a result, more than 12 million people rapidly left Dhaka immediately after the notice that helped rapidly the community transmission. Moreover, the two existing laws for this purpose, Disaster Management Act -2012 and Infectious Disease Act -2018, were ineffective and failed to take into action properly to control such huge mass public mobilizations and gatherings. Improper synchronization among the responsible bodies including the law and order maintaining body, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), the Directorate General of Health Services, Test laboratories, Executives and Health workers, could be a reason for such mismanagements.
After the deteriorating Covid-19 situation in Bangladesh, corruption also spread out. In this situation, the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took a great step declaring 19 different incentives packages with a total value of USD 12.13 billion for the vulnerable people who are suffering from the pandemic. But this incentive packages to implication became a challenge where the intensifying nationwide corruption and with this corruption it’s found that most of the corruption is done or involved by the government officials, public representatives and leaders of the ruling party and activists. Even in July of 2020 a hospital owner along with some responsible persons were arrested with the connection of issuing fake Covdid-19 test certificates and throwing thousands of patients’ samples in the dustbin and producing imaginary results.
Providing adequate healthcare facilities for Covid-19, are also a burning issue for the people in Bangladesh. The Covid-19 test in Bangladesh is only 0.34% which is second-lowest in South Asian countries and only Afghanistan a war-torn country behind Bangladesh. The reason for this situation is insufficient testing laboratories, kits and uneven distributions capacity countrywide as well as expensive tests charge in Private Medicals (USD 40-60) and shortage of sufficient health workers.
The healthcare system became more vulnerable due to insufficient information and communication network. For the cause of health-related information scarcity, the gap of proper information sources, and the defective flow of right information amid the pandemic, rumours became spread among the people. As a result, a large number of people were deprived to have access to reliable information, which letting people to occupy internet-based communication space. This is why more than 200 plus rumours spread all over the country from March 2020 to July 2020. But the timely step reduces the Covid-19 crisis to some degree to detaining the rumours producers and spreaders.
In fact, with no effective therapeutic strategies available for Covid-19, lockdown is perhaps the best-known measure that could mitigate the situation. However, in Bangladesh, where a significant proportion of the total population lives hand to mouth, lockdown is not a feasible idea. Among the preventive measures for Covid-19, including aggressive tracing of cases, vaccination, strict quarantine and screening, as well as education to promote good hand hygiene practices should be put in place.
Fighting with the Covid-19 pandemic without an organised and strategies plan, a proper healthcare system would be like an attempt to kill a lion with bare hands. Definitely, in Bangladesh, there have sufficient health-related laws but the embodiment and application level of laws are not at satisfactory level. Due to the negligence of the health sector, the pandemic could spread out very rapidly and take thousands of lives. We cannot mitigate the risk of overlooking relevant policy or social unawareness content in the interest of our country’s safety from the pandemic.
(Kamruzzaman Shadhin is Barrister-at-Law, (London), Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh & Research Scholar, Indo-USA Global Research Fellowships, Chandigarh University).
