The CSO Alliance, a national coalition of more than 300 civil society platforms and its independent civil society organisations, on Sunday strongly condemned the attack and vandalism at the Radda MCH-FP Centre in the city’s Mirpur-1 area, demanding a prompt, impartial and effective investigation, accountability and compensation.
According to a press release, the alliance said a group of around 200 to 250 people held the clinic’s security guards hostage and looted vaccines, medicines, medical equipment and cash before demolishing the centre’s buildings using heavy machinery around midnight on Thursday.
The CSO Alliance stands with Radda staff and all families dependent on the centre.
“We demand a prompt, impartial and effective investigation, accountability of those responsible and compensation for Radda,” the alliance said in the release.
In 1974, Radda Barnen, an international NGO (the Swedish chapter of Save the Children), began operating the Centre as a project for providing maternal and child health care for the underserved and underprivileged population of Mirpur under Dhaka Metropolitan City.
Radda has for about five decades provided vaccination, maternal care and family planning to poor mothers and children, in partnership with the Government.
The alliance said the Radda Mirpur-1 clinic was attacked just before the second phase of the national measles-rubella campaign was due to start. It is continuing to vaccinate children in makeshift tarpaulin tents, but has had to stop most other services, it said.
The people of Bangladesh expected the newly elected Government to provide greater protection from mob violence and lawlessness, and to ensure effective justice. Unfortunately, these problems continue, and this attack is one more example of that ongoing concern. Land disputes must be resolved through legal processes, not by force in the middle of the night, said the CSO alliance.
Partnership between the Government, businesses and NGOs in economic activity and service delivery depends on the maintenance of law and order. NGOs have long worked alongside the state in health.
The CSO Alliance’s study on 50 years of civil society in Bangladesh shows how this partnership helped expand child immunisation, which stood at just 2 per cent in 1985. Today, 81.6 per cent of children are fully immunised, according to the latest EPI Coverage Evaluation Survey (2023). Everyone needs legal protection from extortion, vandalism and forcible occupation.
“We welcome the nine arrests and the recovery of looted goods so far, the announcement of a police inquiry into the role of its officers, and the Health Minister’s assurance that ownership will be decided by the court and that vaccination will continue,” said the alliance.
The CSO alliance placed a five-point demand including to ensure a prompt, impartial and effective investigation to identify those who planned, financed or took part in the attack, regardless of political identity, and ensure accountability.
Other demands include: Publishing the findings of the police inquiry and information on action taken against any person found responsible; ensuring security for the Radda clinic to operate, and compensation for its losses; and helping Radda move its vaccination and other services from the makeshift tents to a safe temporary facility, and replace the lost vaccines and supplies, so that no child in the area misses the measles-rubella campaign, which ends on 31 October.
The remaining demand is; to protect all health facilities, NGOs and businesses from extortion, vandalism and forcible occupation, and treat any attack on a health facility as an emergency.
The released mentioned nine CSO members who endorsed the demands. They include CSO Alliance Co-Convener and also Honorary Executive Director of BLAST Sara Hossain; CSO Alliance Co-Convener and BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh; Treasurer of the CSO Alliance Executive Committee and Adviser to Kumudini Welfare Trust Shib Narayan Kairi; CSO Alliance Executive Committee Member and Executive Director of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) Rasheda K. Choudhury and CSO Alliance Executive Committee Member and Executive Director of Manusher Jonno Foundation Shaheen Anam.
The others are CSO Alliance Executive Committee Member and Regional Director (South Asia) of WaterAid Hasin Jahan; CSO Alliance Executive Committee Member and Country Director of Nutrition International Dr AKM Musha; CSO Alliance Executive Committee Member and BRAC Senior Director (Advocacy & MEAL) KAM Morshed; and CSO Alliance Secretariat Coordinator and Founder and CEO of Institute for Informed Development (IID) Syeed Ahamed.