Additional Director General (Planning and Development) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora, who became known to the nation providing the daily update on Covid-19, is currently on life support at the ICU of National University of Singapore Hospital (NUSH) after undergoing a surgery. Prof Ahmedul Kabir, DGHS ADG (Administration) confirmed the matter to UNB on Sunday evening. Also read: Actor Amir Siraji on life support "She was admitted into the hospital due to suffering from abdominal pain and mild jaundice. She developed Pancreatitis after going through a surgery there. She has been shifted to the ICU for her health concerns," said Prof Ahmedul. Flora was receiving treatment at the NUSH for over a week. Before that, she was admitted to Dhaka's United Hospital for the same reasons. Also read: National Professor Rafiqul Islam on life support, says family

Anne Heche, the Emmy-winning film and television actor whose dramatic Hollywood rise in the 1990s and accomplished career contrasted with personal chapters of turmoil, died of injuries from a fiery car crash. She was 53. Heche was “peacefully taken off life support,” spokeswoman Holly Baird said in a statement Sunday night. Heche had been on life support at a Los Angeles burn center after suffering a “severe anoxic brain injury,” caused by a lack of oxygen, when her car crashed into a home Aug. 5, according to a statement released Thursday by a representative on behalf of her family and friends. She was declared brain-dead Friday, but was kept on life support in case her organs could be donated, an assessment that took nine days. In the U.S., most organ transplants are done after such a determination. A native of Ohio whose family moved around the country, Heche endured an abusive and tragic childhood, one that helped push her into acting as a way of escaping her own life. She showed enough early promise to be offered professional work in high school and first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1987 to 1991, winning a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of twins Marley and Vicky Hudson, who on the show sustained injuries that anticipated Heche’s: Vicky falls into a coma for months after a car crash. By the late 1990s Heche was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. In 1997 alone, she played opposite Johnny Depp as his wife in “Donnie Brasco” and Tommy Lee Jones in “Volcano” and was part of the ensemble cast in the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” The following year, she starred with Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights” and appeared with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in “Return to Paradise.” She also played one of cinema’s most famous murder victims, Marion Crane of “Psycho,” in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, and co-starred in the indie favorite “Walking and Talking.” Around the same time, her personal life led to even greater fame, and both personal and professional upheaval. She met Ellen DeGeneres at a the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, fell in love and began a 3-year relationship that made one of Hollywood’s first openly gay couples. But Heche later said her career was damaged by an industry wary of casting her in leading roles. She would remember advisers opposing her decision to have DeGeneres accompany her to the premiere of “Volcano.” Read:Beyoncé to remove offensive word from new song “We were tapped on the shoulder, put into her limo in the third act and told that we couldn’t have pictures of us taken at the press junket,” Heche said in 2018 on the podcast Irish Goodbye. After she and DeGeneres parted, Heche had a public breakdown and would speak candidly of her mental health struggles. Heche’s delicately elfin look belied her strength on screen. When she won the National Board of Review’s 1997 best supporting actress award, the board cited the one-two punch of “Donnie Brasco” and the political satire “Wag the Dog,” in which Heche portrayed a cynical White House aide and held her own against film great Robert De Niro. Heche also called effectively on her apparent fragility. In 2002 she starred on Broadway in the play “Proof” as a woman fearful of losing her sanity just like her father, a brilliant mathematics professor. An Associated Press review praised her “touching performance, vulnerable yet funny, particularly when Catherine mocks the suspicions about her mental stability.” In the fall of 2000, soon after her break-up with DeGeneres, Heche was hospitalized after knocking on the door of a stranger in a rural area near Fresno, California. Authorities said she had appeared shaken and disoriented and spoke incoherently to the residents. In a memoir released the following year, “Call Me Crazy,” Heche talked about her lifelong battles. During a 2001 interview with TV journalist Barbara Walters, Heche recounted in painful detail alleged sexual abuse by her father, Donald Heche, who professed to be devoutly religious and died in 1983 from complications of AIDS. Heche described her suffering as so extreme she developed a separate personality and imagined herself descended from another planet. In the final days of his life, Heche said, she learned he was secretly gay and that she believed his inability to live honestly fueled his anger and hurtful behavior. Not long after her father died, her brother Nathan — one of her four siblings — was killed in a car crash. “I’m not crazy. But it’s a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me,” Heche told Walters. In an effort to escape the past, “I drank. I smoked. I did drugs. I had sex with people. I did anything I could to get the shame out of my life.” Heche dated Steve Martin in the 1990s, and is widely believed to have inspired the childlike, but ambitious aspiring actor played by Heather Graham in his Hollywood spoof “Bowfinger.” She later had a son with camera operator Coleman Laffoon, to whom she was married from 2001 to 2009. She had another son during a relationship with actor James Tupper, her co-star on the TV series “Men In Trees.” Heche worked consistently in smaller films, on Broadway and on TV shows in the past two decades. She recently had recurring roles on the network series “Chicago P.D.” and “All Rise,” and in 2020 was a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Film actor Amir Siraji has been put on life support at a private hospital in the city. On Friday night, he was admitted to the private hospital in Rampura are following breathing difficulties. Later he was put on  life support. Zayed Khan, general secretary of Bangladesh Film Artistes Association, wrote in his Facebook post, “Amir Siraji Bhai, a respected member of the artistes' association and a popular actor, has been kept on life support due to shortness of breath. May Allah help him.” Also read: Fakir Alamgir on life support Amir Siraji earlier suffered a heart attack on December 26 last year and was treated at the Incentive Care Unit (ICU) of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital (BSMMU) in the capital. On January 2, he returned home after recovery. Born in Mymensingh’s Gafargaon upazila Amir Siraji began his acting career as an artiste with a jatra troupe named Babul Opera troupe. His first film is Patal Bijay. In 1991 he started acting for Bangladesh Television. Amir Siraji also acted in several government-grant winning films, including Chashi Nazrul Islam’s Megh-er Porey Megh, PA Kajol’s Mukti and Faruk’s Kaktarua. Also read: 'Rehana Maryam Noor' to be available on Chorki from December 30

National Professor Dr Rafiqul Islam has been on life support since Thursday at Dhaka’s Evercare Hospital, according to his family. “Our beloved Professor Rafiqul Islam was put on life support yesterday in a local hospital. He has been unwell for the last few months. Let us all pray for his recovery,” said Professor Imran Rahman, ULAB’s Vice-Chancellor on Friday. Read: Renowned fashion photographer Chanchal Mahmood on life support He was admitted to the hospital four days ago and got shifted to the High Dependency Unit of the hospital after his condition worsened, Barshan Islam, son of the eminent educationist said. Barshan said the family wanted to take his father to India, but he refused. According to the family, Rafiqul Islam wants to be treated in the country. He did not even want to come to Evercare Hospital and was willing to continue receiving treatment at BSMMU. On October 7, the 87-year old National Professor was admitted to BSMMU with abdominal pain. After the examination, the doctors confirmed that water had accumulated in his lungs, which was  extracted. He started his glorious career in academia at Dhaka University in 1957 and taught Bengali and linguistic there till 1958 and then 1961 till 2004 as Senior lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor. Read: Bangla Academy DG Sirajee on life support Inducted as a National Professor in 2018, Prof Dr Rafiqul Islam later became head of the Bangla department at Dhaka University. Later, he became the Vice-Chancellor (2007-2011) of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). One of the most respected Nazrul researchers in the world, Rafiqul Islam was the first Nazrul Professor at the Bangla department of Dhaka University and the first director of the Nazrul Research Centre. He has penned about 30 books, including the first book on martyred intellectuals and the first book on the centenary history of Dhaka University. For his excellence in the field of academia and culture, Professor Dr Rafiqul Islam has received Independence Award (2012), Ekushey Padak (2001), Bangla Academy Literary Award (1994) and International Mother Language Award.

Renowned photographer Chanchal Mahmood, widely considered as one of the most accomplished fashion photographers in the country, has been taken to life support on Sunday at the Labaid Hospital in the capital due to a heart attack. The ace photographer suffered a heart attack on Sunday morning and was immediately taken to the Coronary Care Unit (CCU), according to his wife Raina Mahmood, also a renowned photographer. However, his conditions then slightly improved but got worsened in the afternoon, and then he was put on life support. According to his wife, Mahmood has other health complications including diabetes and a history of 4 previous heart failures. Read: Fakir Alamgir on life support Several renowned personalities and photographers have since shared the news about the award winning photographer on social media including singer Fahmida Nabi and more. Chanchal Mahmood is often considered a trendsetter of model and fashion photography in Bangladesh, who has a successful career spanning over more than four decades. Through his institution ‘Chanchal Mahmood Photography’, he accelerated professionalism in the industry for the fashion photographers and cine-journalists in Bangladesh. Read: Bangla Academy DG Sirajee on life support Several popular film and television actors and models, including Shabnur, Moushumi, Salman Shah, Nobel, Afsana Mimi, Shomi Kaiser, and more, were featured in renowned magazines, newspapers, tabloids, and fashion houses through his charismatic photography. Currently associated with the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Chanchal Mahmood’s photographs have also been exhibited in several photo exhibitions.