Repairs at the Radda MCH-FP health centre in Mirpur-1, Dhaka, are moving quickly, but full services will take longer to restore because medical equipment, furniture and treatment rooms are not yet ready, the centre's managers say. For now, children are vaccinated and women receive basic care at tables set up under a tin shed outside the main building.
According to the centre, 56 people were served on Saturday, 3 October: 35 children were vaccinated and 21 women received health care. Before the damage, the centre served about 400 people a day on average, most of them women and pregnant mothers, and vaccinated around a hundred children.
The centre was attacked, vandalised and looted around midnight on 24 September. The report says more than two hundred masked men took the security guards hostage, looted medicines, vaccines and equipment, and used heavy machinery to break down walls and structures. Broken walls have since been rebuilt and plastered and are being painted, new grilles, doors and windows have been fitted, a water tank has been connected and the toilets are being repaired.
Executive Director Nasrin Akhter said the work is taking longer than first expected and many small jobs remain, so she cannot say when full services will resume. Lost or damaged, she said, were two ultrasound machines and their colour printers, computers, laptops, a fridge, a generator, three large air conditioners, family-planning supplies and special patient beds.
The structural repairs are being paid for personally by State Minister for Youth and Sports Aminul Haque, who said on Saturday evening that the work would be finished and the centre handed back to its managers by next Thursday. Two truckloads of looted goods have been recovered and are in police custody; once they are returned through due process, the centre will know what is missing.
Nasrin Akhter said talks are under way with the Radda trust on equipment and services. Family-planning supplies will come from the Directorate General of Health Services, vaccines are supplied by the city corporation, and government help is being sought for equipment.
Photo: Press Information Department / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Ittefaq
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