The World Health Organization has advised Bangladesh to go for a partial or full lockdown and declare national emergency to fight against the dangerous coronavirus, said Dhaka South City Mayor Sayeed Khokan.
He made the disclosure after a meeting with the representatives of WHO, and US Communicable Disease Control and Protection (CDCP) in the city on Saturday.
Sayeed Khokan said that WHO has given advice to impose lockdown in some places of Dhaka city, and emergency if necessary.
Of course the option of home quarantine or lockdown of the whole city or village is easy to advise. Our government has made recourse to lockdown certain villages. The problem is how to make such steps viable.
That is why we insisted earlier that food and health facilities must also be organised if shutdown or lockdown has to be successful. In other countries where such harsh measures have been taken the government of those countries organised social and government bodies for voluntary services to such confined people.
Think of the farmers, the part-time housemaids, the rickshaw-pullers, the roadside tea stall owners. For these groups of people, stepping outside the home is a necessity if they are to put food on the table.
For them, not only the concept of “home quarantine” is unintelligible, but also akin to financial and other untold miseries.
But these measures along with others must be taken seriously if lives of the people are to be saved.
We have to frankly admit that we are wholly unprepared and we need serious efforts to obtain resources if lives of lakhs of people to be protected.
We have to frankly admit that we are wholly unprepared and we need serious efforts to obtain resources if lives of lakhs of people to be protected.
Knowing the inability of the government to move quickly we would urge the World Health Organisation and other international organisation to take the situation in Bangladesh most urgently and earnestly.
Our situation is specially fragile and vulnerable because we do not have the health care structure to cover such a densely populate country. On top of the whole crisis, the fear of spreading the virus quickly among the huge number of Rohingya refugees living in crammed and unhygienic circumstances is no less worrisome.
We have organisational problems. We need more doctors and nurses. There is acute necessity for beds, ventilators, testing kits and other medical equipment. To save the lives of doctors and nurses in the front line, there has to be plenty of protective gears.
The two most important advice they have given are: Washing hands frequently and social distancing meaning keeping safe distance in person to person contacts.
One of the lessons of China, was that many COVID-19 patients who would normally have been incubated and on ventilators managed to survive with oxygen alone.
The heavy cost of negligence will be loss of lives in thousands from the avalanche of Corona pandemic. We must unite and mobilise ourselves as a nation to be on a war footing for our fight against the fast spreading virus.
Declaring emergency or imposing lockdown by themselves will not enhance our capacity to make the steps viable. We are unhappy not to find the realisation of the need of such united mobilisation against the deadly pandemic worldwide.
We welcome the move to take help from the armed forces to get our acts together for containing the pandemic and saving lives. Actions are to be taken against crowded bus and train services.
Without due preparedness of making available essential services lockdown or shut down will cause much hardship and not be helpful. Staying home many people confined may spread the virus among family members. This is not an easy decision as it sounds.
For disorderly health system and rickety administration the success of army deployment is also not be an easy responsibility. The virus is health problem and success will much depend on the efficiency of the health care system.
