Princess is yet to have a name

Some call her 'rajkumari' others 'rajkannya'. In English, though, princess is enough for both words. Twenty-three days' old, the baby is yet to have a name. In fact, she could die unnamed but for the providence that had intervened before a gang of stray dogs ate her alive. Some parts of her nose and mouth were torn off and eaten by the dogs all the same. Even two finger tips of the left hand were devoured by those dogs.

When the dogs were in competition for feasting on the new-born left abandoned in a cement bag on the runway of the old airport near the capital's Sheorapara, a few women rescued her from the canine attack and brought to the Shishu (paediatric) hospital and from there to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). A nine member-medical team was formed to look after the new-born. Twenty-three days into her admission to the hospital, she has recovered well and under the government stipulation she can no longer be allowed to stay at the hospital.

She has to go. Yet the nameless princess has nowhere to go in this wide world. Right after her birth, she was an unwanted baby. No one claimed her responsibility; rather she was deliberately left to die. But she did not die although she was on the verge of death.

She has by now grown into a beautiful baby, gaining weight. All because she was taken well care of. Indeed, physicians at the country's largest healthcare facility have been doing excellent jobs. Only recently did they go through a similar traumatic experience when a newborn who was wounded in her mother's womb was admitted there. There was a happy reunion when both mother and daughter responded well to treatment and left the hospital for their Magura home. In professions like that of medical, there is hardly any room for emotion. But the doctors and nurses involved with her care are getting emotional. For the last three weeks or so, it was them who had developed an attachment with the little one unaware.

This time there is no mother waiting for the little one. Chhotomoni Nibas under the Department of Social Welfare Service is going to be her next shelter. Perhaps it is this fact that no near and dear one actually waits with open arms to receive her has drawn the physicians and nurses closer to her. With days they became soft towards her. They surely feel satisfied for the job done well. Now with her taking leave from them, they will be missing her. This shows how sacrosanct life is to doctors and nurses. They are not there to question the history of birth. To them a life is a life and it has to be treated with care.

The physicians of the neonatal unit of the DMCH have once again given a good account of themselves. Their devotion to the cause of humanity is unfortunately not shared or matched by the majority of their fraternity. Too much commercialisation of the profession, together with neglect to patients has earned a bad name for the country's physicians. If the good work done by the DMCH's paediatric doctors and surgeons is emulated by others in the profession, it surely has a chance of leaving the ill reputation behind.