How did the corona spread initially in Bangladesh (5)
How did the corona spread initially in Bangladesh
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Dr. Md. Jafar Ullah
Professor
Department of Agronomy
Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: jafarullahsau@gmail.com
(5)
In the previous section, I liked to say that every nation or sect of people had some cultures of their own to which the majority of them like to cling. For example, I mentioned two examples of food habits, one of China and the other relating to people of the sub-continent - eating some unusual foods like wild animals and chewing vine leaves which people of many other nations of the world are not used to.
Well, I also believe in that all the people of those nations or sects are not used to those food habits. There are some people who deviate from the habit of their own locality. For example, we the Bangladeshi people are used to chewing betel leaves, ‘Pan’ in Bengali, which is composed of betel leaf, betel nut and lime; and in many cases Jorda - tobacco leaf powder. Each of these constituents may have medicinal values, but for the people who chew this, objective is not to exploit the medicinal benefits of those constituents, but it is due to that those people are strongly fascinated (I should not say addicted) to the ‘Pan’.
Well, its not their fault, the fault is - when they colour the roads, walls, floors even the places of the public gathering polluting the environment. This is a bad habit of spitting while chewing every where - where ever they roam about. There are some countries wherein selling or chewing ‘Pan’ is strongly prohibited and if traced, they face giving fine financially to the aligned police. However, I may not like chewing ‘Pan’, but I should respect, I agree it, because many of my own people are also used to this item of food (food or stimulating item) and probably, this the part of our heritage.
Let us come to the point of the head line above this section. More than 4,500 overseas returnees arrived home from Middle East, Italy, Canada, USA, China and also from some other countries so far since the December last to March last. Government first imposed quarantine of the returnees who came from abroad, separating them when they arrived in the airport and took them in some specified quarantine camp. At the beginning, those returnees were quarantined at the ‘Ashkana Hajj Camp’ near the Dhaka airport and later, owing to the objection of Hajj related agencies, the quarantine programme was transferred to Diabari near Uttara of Dhaka city.
Initially the air passengers did not like to be thermally scanned or quarantined and hided themselves escaping the eyes of the responsible person with thermal scanning in the airport with the fear of being quarantined.
This situation hardened the situation to some extent as the primary start of corona incidence was reported from these escaped returnees. That is, the news of the corona incidence was noticed mostly from those of the people where they finally settled, mostly in Dhaka city and others either in other cities or in the villages.
Later, the government took initiatives to trace them, but some or major number of those could not be traced out. Finally government declared that if they did not inform the police regarding their ‘current staying address’, their passport will be ceased. This also did not produce good results.
This attitude of the returnees was not even liked by the neighbouring people where the returnees finally settled.
In some places, when the news of corona incidence came out in the villages, the villagers were caught with panic and in one case as I know, the villagers attacked the returnee’s home causing social unrest.
At one time when the corona was at the first stage of mass spread, Bangladesh government has closed all the airports for the foreigners and also Bangladeshi returnees. In spite of that, the returnees were in rush in the airport hiring chartered aircraft from Italy, Spain, Middle East, Saudi Arabi and also from some other European countries where the corona has aggravated disrupting the health managements systems even in those rich, modern and developed countries.
(To be continued)
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