Social organisations raise awareness about coronavirus

They disinfect public places and transports and carrying out campaigns among working class and underprivileged people

TALHA BIN HABIB and ADNAN HOSSAIN BHUIYAN | Published: March 21, 2020 21:57:47

Several volunteer and social organisations have extended their helping hands to the country's efforts to raise awareness about the new infectious coronavirus disease COVID-19 in the capital as elsewhere in the country.
Some of the organisations have also been disinfecting public places and public transports to mitigate possible spread of the viral infection.
These organisations are carrying out the voluntary campaigns especially among the working class and underprivileged people who are already in vulnerable situation in terms of health safety.
Apart from handing out leaflets describing techniques of maintaining personal hygiene and social distancing, the volunteers are also distributing soaps, hand sanitizers, face masks etc.
Among the organisations, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BRCS) has taken a set of measures to prevent the infection of coronavirus.
Around one million volunteers and officials of the society started to work to prevent further spreading of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection at the grass-root level of the country.
An official of the BRCS told the FE that the youth and volunteers of the society have been conducting various awareness programmes including disinfection spray to prevent the use of hand-sanitizer of passengers in buses, trains and launch terminals in different areas of the country.
The BRCS official further said they already provided training to the doctors, nurses and staff of Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College Hospital.
It also provided 185 sets of personal protective equipment with sufficient quantities of soaps, hand sanitizers and others medical supplies.
The official said a good number of trained staff working at the grass-root level have been asked to update top brasses of society about coronavirus.
Bidyanondo Foundation is one of the early responding volunteer organisations in the country to start awareness campaign.
The foundation, a registered voluntary organisation providing education to underprivileged children, has been distributing hand sanitizers and face masks to the people in need in different parts of the city, said its Dhaka unit chief Salman Khan Yeasin.
Volunteer teams of the organisation are also spraying disinfectants in public transportations like buses, human haulers, CNG auto-rickshaws, and rickshaws.
They also sprayed disinfectants at Kamalapur Railway Station and railway carriages on Thursday and Friday in an effort to restrain the spread of coronavirus, according to the Facebook page of the organisation.
The organisation is collecting donation for their campaign. Details about donation can be found in its Facebook page.
Meanwhile, a Facebook group named SSC 2007 and HSC 2009 Bangladesh distributed face masks and soaps to over a thousand disadvantaged people in city's Shahbagh intersection and Airport Rail Station area on Friday.
They also handed out leaflets to general people communicating awareness notes about coronavirus.
Noman Mozumder, the administrator of the group who participated in the campaign, said, "We tried to distribute soaps and facemasks to the people like street children, day labourers, slum dwellers etc who don't have the ability to buy such products."
Besides, Bangladesh Students' Union has been manufacturing hand sanitizers for the last five days with the help of 25 students from pharmacy, chemistry and biochemistry departments of Dhaka University, Jahangirnagar University and Jagannath University.
So far the student volunteers have produced over 10,000 bottles (50 millilitre each) hand sanitizers to distribute it at different city areas like Boubazar slum in Tejgaon, Paltan, Kmarangichar and Dhaka University area.
They also supplied hand sanitizers to the intern doctors of Kurmitola General Hospital where the facilities have been established to treat COVID-19 patients.
On Saturday, the number of coronavirus infected patients in the country stood at 24 of which two died and three fully recovered from the disease.
In the meantime, Health Minister Dr Zahid Maleque at a press conference in the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said some 14,000 people across the country are now on home quarantine while 50 are in administrative quarantine.
COVID-19 so far caused deaths of more than 11,842 people globally while it infected some 284,724 people in 186 countries and territories, according to worldometers.info, a website providing counters and statistics on diverse topics.
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