The fact that the leaders of ‘Students Against Discrimination’ are strictly monitoring the advisers of the interim government led by Dr Muhammad Yunus becomes clear from coordinator Hasnat’s statement.
While gone to visit the injured people at Sheikh Hasina National Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute on Friday, Hasnat Abdullah identified the inability to provide them with advanced treatment as the ‘first failure’ of the interim government.
According to him the failure is the inability to ensure international level of treatment for the people injured centering the movement and not being able to prepare a complete list of them till now. At the same time he called on the ministry of health and family welfare to take steps in this regard within 24 hours.
Following this call from Hasnat Abdullah, a notice sent out from the ministry of health and family welfare on Saturday stated that the government will bear all the expenses of treatment as well as provide free medical care in government hospitals to the people injured in clashes and encounters during the student movement.
Separate special units have been formed in every hospital. In addition to that the private medical college hospitals, private hospitals and clinics have been requested for the time being not to take payments for the treatment of students and people injured during the student movement. The government will bear all the medical expenses of the students and people undergoing treatment in private hospitals.
We welcome this initiative from the ministry of health and family welfare. Hopefully they will not end their duties with just issuing a notice, but will continue to monitor the public and private hospitals so that no one injured during the movement is deprived of medical care. The problem here is that there’s no record of how many people have been injured all over the country while gone to join the student movement.
Correspondents of Prothom Alo had been to 38 government and private hospitals in the capital from 23 July to 27 July and talked to the authorities there. As many as 6,703 people were reported to be injured in incidents of clashes and encounters at that time. Those patients had arrived in the hospitals between 16 July and 22 July. A number of people became injured and went to the hospitals to get medical care after that as well.
We cannot get back the youths who have lost their lives going to the movement any longer. But we can at least treat the injured people with medical care so that they can return to their normal lives.
Right at this moment, the most important task for all the people concerned is to make arrangement of better medical treatment for the injured ones. There are a lot of complaints about the medical facilities available in government hospitals. The authorities in this case have to assure that those will not be repeated and nobody will be denied of medical services. Since majority of the injured have suffered bullet injuries, many of them might require surgeries also.
Advisers of the interim government right in the beginning have talked about working in consultation with the coordinators of the ‘Students Against Discrimination’ platform. Two of the representatives of the student movement are also included in this interim government with charge of some significant ministries.
In this context, the fact that the students have given priority to the matter of injured persons’ treatment and have warned the government on this will also continue in the future, we hope. It must be kept in mind that this movement became successful under the leadership of the students and with the spontaneous participation of people from all walks of life.
We will hope that a complete list of injured persons will be prepared right away and arrangements will be made for their better treatment. This would at least make the relatives of the injured feel that the state has not forgotten those who got injured for its democratic transformation.