Health minister’s bizarre claim

Yet again, Health Minister Zahid Maleque hogged the headlines for wrong reasons. While inaugurating the first PCR lab facility in a private hospital in capital Dhaka on June 20, he claimed that the death toll from coronavirus in the country still remained low because of the health sector’s ‘quick response’ to the pandemic that had been spreading panic here since early March. The claim is surprising on the one hand and shocking on the other hand. 

It is surprising as it came at a time when death toll from the virus is on a sharp rise. Moreover, we have already lost two of our top intellectuals─ Professor Anisuzzaman and Kamal Lohani, ministers, members of parliament, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, businesspeople and renowned doctors to the virus. The health minister appears to have failed to understand the enormity of the loss the virus has so far caused to the nation. 

The country, on an average, sees around 40 deaths every day because of the pandemic. The total number of deaths from the virus has already crossed 1,500. Notably, all this is the official figure declared by the health directorate. Many deaths with coronavirus symptoms happen every day in different parts of the country, which remain unrecorded as the victims fail to approach hospitals or prefer not to unveil their illness just to save their family members from social stigma that has already been ripen in different communities.

Thus far, more than 50 physicians, nurses and other health workers, frontline fighters in the ongoing war against the invisible enemy of the human civilisation, have died from COVID-19. 

Many more are feared to embrace similar fate in the days to come as near one-third of them are reportedly, still, lack proper protective measures in workplaces. Concerns are high among experts that all this may lead to a situation, in which very few will be available for treating COVID-19 patients. 

Meanwhile, oxygen cylinders, crucial for treating severe COVID-19 patients at a low cost, have become a golden deer in recent weeks even in Dhaka. Even hospital beds are also, reportedly, elusive for ordinary people in particular. There is a scarcity of ICU beds, essential for critical COVID-19 patients, in the hospitals across the country. Apparently to cash in on this situation, private hospitals are allegedly charging exorbitantly for COVID-19 treatment defying government guidelines. Regrettably, however, the minister appears to be bent on turning blind eyes to the problems.

His claim certainly came as a shock to the people who have lost their near and dear ones in the epidemic. It is all the more so as the claim seems to have failed to reflect the fact that the people, who have died of COVID-19, are not just numbers; that they were somebody’s spouses, somebody’s parents, somebody’s siblings and somebody’s children; that their loved ones might have said them goodbye lying on beds next to them in the hospital or might have failed to attend their funeral in compliance with the WHO guidelines over the issue.

This is not the first time the health minister has made such a claim. On May 14, in an orientation programme for newly appointed 2,000 doctors and 6,000 nurses in the capital, he said that coronavirus was ‘not causing that many deaths in Bangladesh’. Till then, a total of 269 coronavirus deaths took place in the country. Besides, the number of confirmed cases took a turn for the worse in the period as the figure neared 18,000. Unfortunately, however, scathing public criticism then failed to make the minister come out of his apathy to public health.

One can recall here that the same minister, during the worst-ever dengue epidemic last year, went on a foreign tour with his family members after cancelling the leaves of all physicians and support staff in the public sector. Of course, he soon came back shortening the trip then following widespread angers on social media in particular. 

The health minister has predilections for comparing the COVID-19 situation of Bangladesh with that of the US and west European countries in particular where the virus literally wreaked havoc on public life for three and a half months since late January. With confirmed cases skyrocketing in just a short span of time, the death rate from the disease became 15 percent in France, 14 in the United Kingdom and Italy, 11 percent in Spain, 17 percent in Belgium and 6 percent in the US. As the figure in Bangladesh remained below 1.5 percent in recent time, although the number of infected cases has already gone well beyond one lakh, the minister opted for the comparison between the former countries and the latter in a bid to justify his position.

It cannot, however, be denied that while elderly people─ deemed more vulnerable than other age groups to COVID-19─ constitute 7.5 percent of the total population of Bangladesh, the figures in the US and the European countries are well above 20 percent. Most importantly, the latter countries found ways to contain or significantly reduce the virus infections within three and a half months, but Bangladesh is scrambling for ways to cope with the rising tide of the virus cases even beyond the time period.

In fact, it would have been logical enough, if the minister compared our coronavirus situation with that of Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia ─ our competitors in the global export market, Nepal and Bhutan - our south Asian neighbours. All these countries have so far seen either zero or very few deaths from the virus. The number of cases there are also far behind ours. But Zahid Maleque, of course for understandable reasons, preferred not to go along the way.

Be that as it may, the political boss of the health ministry needs to realise that his works and words whatsoever have impacts on activities of officials in general of the ministry. This is, perhaps, why, most of his subordinates, like him, has given some lip services in the name of fight against the deadly virus so far. Ever since the first case detection in China in late December 2019, they sought to reassure public that they had taken every preparation to defeat the virus. But the ground reality still tells otherwise.

It is high time that the minister made a course correction and walked the talks to stop the procession of deaths, not to mention new coronavirus cases.

The writer is a journalist.