BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Sunday alleged that the dengue outbreak has turned epidemic in the country because of rampant corruption in the health sector.
"The government has miserably failed to prevent dengue due to its incompetence and corruption,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference at BNP’s Nayapaltan central office, the BNP leader also said the people all over Bangladesh are grappling with dengue fever amid the inaction of the Dhaka North and South City Corporations.
“The dengue situation has now reached epidemic proportions due to all-pervasive corruption in the health sector. Dengue epidemic has broken all previous records this year,” Fakhrul said.
He lamented that that deaths caused by dengue have long been becoming the main headlines in the media as an average of 20 people are dying every day.
The total number of dengue deaths and cases this year reached 716 and 1, 45,335 respectively as of Saturday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Among the fatalitie and cases, 342 deaths and 71,976 cases were recorded in August alone.
Fakhrul said the dengue has spread rapidly this year due to the government’s apathy and the use of low quality insecticides to kill Aedes mosquitoes.
“We don't know how many patients are suffering from dengue fever…it’s easy to guess the actual number of patients…that would be several times higher (than the government’s statistics,” he observed.
The BNP leader said the dengue started spreading in the country since 2000 while the disease turned deadly in 2018.”The children are now the worst affected. The queue of dead bodies is increasing. But the government is least bothered about it. There’s no initiative to contain the dengue outbreak.
He also depicted the picture of corruption of ``thousands of crores'' in the name of dengue prevention by Dhaka North and South City Corporations.
Fakhrul slammed the government for increasing the prices of medical equipment and treatment materials to prevent dengue.
The BNP Secretary General urged their party leaders and workers to come forward to control the dengue situation and stand beside the affected people.