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Young Bangla raising awareness among volunteers
DHAKA, April 5, 2020 (BSS) – Leading youth platform Young Bangla has
drummed up nationwide awareness raising campaign online among the young
volunteers working for their communities to stand by the destitute people
suffering for daily necessaries during the lockdown triggered by deadly
coronavirus outbreak.
Centre for Research and Information or CRI, mother organization of Young
Bangla, selected the youths across the country based on their activities that
changed the lives of their communities to come up with their humanitarian
response during the global pandemic that had already claimed nine lives in
Bangladesh and over 64,000 across the globe.
Their voluntary activities included offering food to low-income group,
including wage-earners who are leading a tough time putting their body and
soul together during the period of lockdown.
The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic prompted the government to declare
general holidays to enforce ‘stay at home’ directives shutting all public and
private offices excepting emergency services, closing educational
institutions and imposing a ban on operation of all transports, trains,
vessels and domestic flights to slow the spread of the deadly contagious
virus.
The youths also campaigned for social distancing when they found it is
necessary to avoid community transmission using the modes like microphone and
painting ‘circles of distance’ in front of the shops and other public places.
Since their voluntary involvement increases their chance of being affected
with the virus, Young Bangla’s secretariat Centre for Research and
Information (CRI) has organised as many as three bridging webinars (meetings
for discussion or training that is conducted over online), held last week,
between 200 community youth leaders and health and wellbeing practitioners.
Participating youths in those sessions have received guidelines and briefs
on ‘Volunteerism and Safety in Corona days’ recently.
Eminent physician Prof Mamun Al Mahtab (Shwapnil), Chairman, Liver
Department, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), a medical
scientist who co-invented Hepatitis-B drug named Nasvac, joined the third
online discussion providing youths with the guidelines and answered their
queries.
In the second webinar (online session), Dr Md Ashraf Uddin Ahmed, Resident
Physician of BIRDEM, Md Jahidul Hasan, Clinical Pharmacist of Square Hospital
and Mohammd Habibur Rahman, National Technical Advisor-One Health Training
and Outreach, ECTAD-FAO, Bangladesh joined as experts to answer the questions
and concerns of the Young Bangla network who fights CV online and even
offline where there are no other option.
“As the virus emerged as a pandemic all across the world, you, volunteers
serving humanity, are doing a great job. But, you must maintain a set of
hygiene rules since you are out to the street,” Prof Mamun Al Mahtab said.
He said when the youth would go back to their residences they should keep
their shoes or sandals outside.
Otherwise, they should clean it properly before placing it inside the
home, he added.
“You can keep a box to isolate the wallet, watches, and all other stuff
you carry outside since you never know what might carry the virus. Wipe the
mobile phone with a rag soaked in liquid soap,” he added.
“Not everyone needs to use a surgical mask since it is neither available
nor affordable. What you can do is use two or three-layered masks,” he
remarked on the use of masks.
While all the cautionary words from every corner of the world are about
coronavirus outbreak, some other aspects of hygiene are often overlooked and
that matters most to the volunteers.
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Reflecting on the point, Mahtab said everyone should remain very careful
about dehydration and heat-stroke since it is the summertime and the hot sun
may sap away your energy.
“Carry a bottle of water and make sure that you don’t drink water from any
unreliable sources since they might cause liver diseases and other
complications. In case you have to take lunch at restaurants, be sure that
the food is freshly cooked and hot,” he suggested.
Apart from hygiene, he also advised youths to make their community aware
of fake news regarding Corona, which in his view is a global issue.
To substantiate his argument, he said, Australia has made an app to filter
out fake news or rumor.”
“It frustrates me when I see people spread rumors by faking the logos of
global organizations like World Health Organizations (WHO). Why don’t people
just visit the official website of WHO and check it out?” he went on saying.
About the situation of the epidemic in Bangladesh, he said, “When the
entire world is scared of it, cities around the planet are under lockdown,
the premiers or their spouses in the most developed countries are diagnosed
with this deadly virus, you cannot say that Bangladesh is not doing enough or
you cannot say that it shattered Bangladesh once you take the global scale
into account. When someone says why the country did not act more promptly, I
say they hardly have any idea about the setting up and running a PCR Lab that
is neither so easy nor so affordable.”
Young Bangla develops a guidelines based on these consultations as a draft
to be shared it with more experts and relevant agencies.
Young Bangla in its first webinar with its network emphasizes more on
‘stay home’ message and orients the network about uses of ICT tools to raise
awareness among the community.
Young Bangla also highlights the issue of accessing right information and
shared sources with the webinar participants.
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