Shaheen Mollah

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.

Major terminals and depots in the capital have become ideal breeding grounds for Aedes mosquito, the carrier of dengue virus, thanks to puddles formed in discarded tyres and plastic containers.

Prices of essential goods are on the rise as the supply of goods in the market is comparatively low during the lockdown.

The sale of sacrificial animals gathered pace in the capital’s cattle markets two days before the Eid-ul-Azha yesterday, although traders were charging higher prices compared to last year.

With only two days remaining before Eid-ul-Azha, selling of sacrificial animals is yet to gain momentum at markets in Dhaka.

The government’s condition of maintaining health guidelines for allowing cattle markets ahead of Eid-ul-Azha seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Even though the cattle markets in the capital were scheduled to start from Saturday, they are already witnessing large crowds as not only traders are bringing in sacrificial animals, people are also thronging there to purchase those, even amid the lockdown. 

To live off the streets of Dhaka is not merely living in hunger, it also comes with an immense lack of security. For the “tokai” -- a child waste picker -- living in the capital, hunger and malnutrition is almost the least of their concern, with much bigger dangers lurking around all the time.

“Get us out of here. Please help!” These were the last words Liton heard from his sister-in-law Jahanara Begum when he called her on Thursday evening.