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Gopalganj Sadar Hospital is limping with shortage of doctors, staff and surgical equipment.
   The district civil surgeon said the 31-bed hospital is now running with only 50 beds although it was upgraded to 250 beds in 2000.
   Although the pathology department of the hospital offers blood, stool, urine, ECG, ultra sonogram, X-ray tests at a cheaper cost, patients are going back from the hospital as there is a shortage of doctors and beds.
   The two operation theatres of the hospital are running with old surgical instruments and the only generator of the hospital most of the time remains out of order.
   The emergency department has no doctor at all while there should be at least four doctors. Doctors from private clinics are working in the emergency department while the there are emergency cases, he alleged.
   The post for junior consultant of tuberculosis department of the hospital is still blank while the only one ambulance cannot be use always for fund crunch, the civil surgeon said.
   Attendants of patients claimed that whenever they go to the pathology department for different tests, the duty-men suggest them to go to private pathology centres as the department lacks in chemicals and instrument.
   Patients coming to the emergency department are usually treated by assistants while the bedcovers, mosquito nets, floors, bathroom and toilets are very dirty, they claimed.
   An official of the hospital said the staff, who are in charge of cleaning and washing, are not doing their duties. Goats, cows, dogs roams within the hospital compound.
   The doctors now serving in the hospital also practise in his own residences or own clinics and diagnostic centres.
   They are not available at the hospital as most of the time they are engaged in private practice, he added.

Malaria claimed at least 65 lives and attacked over 40,000 persons in Rangamati during first half of the current year, say statistics provided by the World Vision and a local NGO, Taungya.
   A total of 41 persons died of malaria and 25,628 contracted it between January and June,
   said statistics available at the Rangamati civil surgeon office.
   The disease claimed eight lives and attacked over 1,200 in June alone at the hard-to-reach upazila, Langadu, sources
   in the upazila health com- plex and Rabeta Hospital there said.
   Malarial situation prevailing in all the ten upazilas in the district is same as that of at Langadu.
   The actual number of death from malaria and the affected persons is at least three times higher than the figure provided by the civil surgeon office, said former Rangamati MP Sudipta Dewan.
   He said a good number of malarial patients died at their homes as they could not be rushed to upazila health complexes or hospitals in the district headquarters in time because of communication hazards, fund constraints and inaccessibility.
   ’It has become very difficult for us to serve the patients properly due to acute shortage of doctors in the district,’ said the district civil surgeon, Dr Mohammad Nazer.
   Only 58 doctors out of 138 have been looking after
   the patients in the 100-bed Rangamati General Hospital, nine upazila health comp-
   lexes and dozens of other health care units in the district, he said.

Poverty is pushing over two thousand and half children to drop out from school every year at Kalapara upazila in Patuakhali.
   According to sources at the Kalapara education office, 16 per cent of the school going children, between 6 and 10 years of age, dropped out from schools in 2004 while 16126 students enrolled with different schools at the upazila in the year.
   Most of the students left schools to assist their fathers financially. Even if they are sent to school, they will never be able to avail higher education.
   This is why their fathers think it profitable to train up their children for work even in their childhood, local people said.
   Seminars and civic dialogues were held at the upazila at the initiative of non-governmental organisation SDA patronised by SAP Bangladesh and under the agreement between different human rights and woman rights organisations to cheek the dropping out of children from schools.
   But, due to carelessness of poor guardians the rate of dropping out of children from schools did not decrease. In the hope of getting ready money the poor parents send their children to different works instead of sending them to schools.
   If the poor families are provided with foods and money, the drop-out of children from school can be checked, local people think so.

People of Rajbari and Faridpur have been suffering from frequent power failure and voltage fluctuation for the past three months.
   Local people alleged the power supply goes off at least 3 to 4 times a day and sometimes for the whole day, paralysing the normal life.
   The erratic electricity supply hampers production at mills and factories, treatment of patients in hospitals, academic activities of students apart from causing untold sufferings to housewives.
   Electrical goods, including TV sets, bulbs, fans, fax machines and refrigerators, are being damaged due to the erratic power supply.
   Most of the roads in the town plunge into darkness at night creating scopes for committing anti-social activities in the area.
   Sources at the Power Development Board said the district requires about 9 to 10MW electricity per day while the board supplies only 5 to 6MW.
   Meanwhile, most of the area in Rajbari and Faridpur experienced a five-hour power outage due to failing in short circuit at Komorpur in Faridpur on Thursday.
   The accident left more than 10-lakh people in Rajbari without power the whole day.

The Cox’s Bazar Government College is beset with various problems, including shortage of teacher, accommodation and transport crises and unavailability of masters courses, college sources said.
   The students have to go to Chittagong or Dhaka for higher studies after securing honours certificate.
   Academic affairs of the college have very often been disturbed and students have to sit for examinations without completing their syllabus properly.
   Besides, the college offers accommodation neither for the students nor for the teachers. They have to live outside the campus, five kilometers away from the district town while there is no arrangement for transport.
   The college introduced honours courses in seven subjects – Bengali, economics, political science, accounting, management, mathematics and botany – in 1997.
   Of the total 60 posts of teachers, at least 17 remain vacant.
   The teachers often face embarrassment when they cannot conduct classes because of inadequate classrooms.
   The condition and number of books in the college library and departmental seminars is inadequate.
   There is neither any good playground nor any auditorium for them to organise a function or cultural programme.
   The college principal, Fazlul Karim, told newsmen, ‘Students do not have their regular classes owing to teachers’ shortage.’

Black gram cultivation in the Barind region of the country may come out as a potential sector, saving foreign exchange besides meeting up the household demand of the country.
   Black gram cultivation could be an opening to a new way to increase fodder production, making the land more fertile as well as bringing profit to the local farmers of the region.
   Wasim Malakar, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension, Chapai Nawabganj, expressed his optimism about cultivation of black gram in the region.
   Normally, hundreds of acres of cultivable lands in the Barind region remain barren after harvesting aman paddy and a few farmers show interest in cultivating wheat, gram or pea in their lands.
   Farmers would be benefited economically if they had shown interest in cultivating black gram.
   Wasim said earlier the local farmers cultivated black gram once a year that forced them to keep the land uncultivated except during the time of aman cultivation.
   Considering the huge demand of pulse in the country, the department has already produced a type of high breed black gram that takes only 60 to 70 days to be harvested, he added.
   Black gram cultivation is very profitable as the farmers could cultivate black gram twice after cultivating aman paddy as well as wheat.
   The advantage of black gram farming is that its planting needs only a little water and fertiliser.
   The agriculture experts stress black gram cultivation as nearly three maunds of pulses worth Tk 3,000 could be harvested cultivating the grain on one bigha lands costing only Tk 500.
   Moreover, its plants is a nutritious food for the cows and the leaves and the roots would become natural fertiliser after coming in touch with the rain water or irrigation.
   The Agriculture official said that they do not know the exact estimated demand of black gram in the country.
   But only Pran, a multi-production company, demands around 1800 tonnes of black gram a year, excepting other multi-production companies, hotels and household demand.
   Every year the country imports a huge amount of black gram to meet the demand of the country while thousands of hectares of lands remain uncultivated in the country especially in the Barind region.

The government has taken up a massive programme to distribute fry free of cost among the fish farmers affected in the last year’s flood in seven unions at Chuadanga sadar.
   The seven unions are Alokdia, Shankar Chandra, Padmabila, Mominpur, Kutubpur, Begumpur and Titudah.
   Huge fry were distributed at a function held in the auditorium of Shankar Chandra Union Parisad with Faruk Hossain, acting chairman of Shankar Chandra UP, in the chair on Tuesday.
   The sadar upazila nirbahi officer, Dr Abdul Mannan, formally distributed the fry in presence of a huge gathering.
   Chuadanga district Fishery Officer AKM Aminul Islam, senior upazila fishery officer Ramjan Ali and Chuadanga sadar upazila PIO Shishir Kumar were present.