COVID-19 exposes healthcare system vulnerabilities

IF YOU cast your mind back a few months and imagine someone telling you that within a few months, schools will be closed indefinitely, all public gatherings will be cancelled, social distancing will be the norm, people will be buying masks, soap and hand sanitisers more than anything else in the world, hundreds of millions of people around the world will be jobless, hundreds and thousands of people will die within weeks and governments will be throwing together some of the largest economic stimulus packages in history, you would say that someone is out of his or her mind. But, guess what? That is exactly what is happening now and even more. It is proved by now that the novel coronavirus knows no gender, no race, no geographical boundaries and no political beliefs.

The realisation that life is going to change for good while it starts taking hold. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the COVID-19 pandemic is a world-shattering event whose far-ranging consequences we can only begin to imagine today. It has undoubtedly affected every society on the planet, healthcare systems, global politics, people’s way of life, their thinking process and their livelihood, to say the least. Bangladesh is facing the same situation as the rest of the world. According to IEDCR reports, already 60 districts, which include the capital, have had COVID-19 patients. Every day, the death toll is increasing and we are losing lives.