The New Nation - Internet Edition

The feet of the dead protrude from underneath a
collapsed tin shed following the devastating storm that
swept overnight at Joymoni of Rupsha in Mongla on Friday.
Focus Bangla

Cyclone Sidr damaged a billboard at Progati Sarani
in the city. The snap was taken on Friday. Focus
Bangla

An uprooted tree fell on the road near the Matsya
Bhavan in the city on Friday storm. FocusBangla

The body of a cyclone victim on a devastated paddy
field in Patuakhali yesterday. FocusBangla

Staff Reporter

Thousands of people are feared dead in different areas in the country, battered by the super cyclone SIDR that first hit the central part of Bangladesh at 5:30pm on Thursday and continued its devastation till it crossed the country's area at 9:00am yesterday.

The government officials confirmed 740 dead while reporters from different parts of the country said the figure might be above 15000. Number of missing and injured people would be much higher. About 50,000 people, most of them fishermen, became stranded at different remote islands, including Dublar Char and Hiron Point, in the bay. While many fishermen, who went to the bay did not returned till yesterday.

Seven Naval Ships equipped with sufficient quantity of dry foods, medicines and medical staffs left yesterday afternoon to rescue and help the people stranded in remote islands in the bay.

Central part of the severe cyclone passed through the central part of the country, hitting entire Bangladesh fully or partiallay, levelling homes and standing aman and robi crops on its way. Thousands of cattleheads, deer and Royal Bengal tiger of the Sundarban and birds are also feared dead. Barguna and part of Patuakhali districts of Barisal division and Bagerhat and part of Satkhira districts of Khulna division are worst hit by the cyclone. The SIDR, a fourth grade cyclone, which had a radius 274 killometres while the radius of its eye was 74 killometres, hit the entire Bangladesh coast at the windspeed from 100 killometres to 200 killometres per hour (kph) depending on the location of the places from its eye. Coast of Khulna and Barisal (divisions), which covered by the radius of the eye of the cyclone and hit with the windspeed from 185 kph to 220 kph, experienced 10 feet to 20 feet tidal surge washing away homes, standing crops and cattles.

The whole country plunged into darkness as the electricity authorities started cutting power connection from 5:00pm on Thursday to 2:00am today. Land telephone communications was disconnect in most part of the country while internet was disrupted as optical fibre was cut down at a number of places.

All the 15 coastal districts were hit by the cyclone. Of these 11 districts were worst hit by the storm.Government spokespersons, including Chief Adviser's Press Secretary Syed Fhim Munayem said about 2,31000 houses were destroyed while 70 per cent of the standing crop was badly damaged. Infrastuctures and road communications suffered a massive damage, which

Secretary of the Disaster Management Ministry Mohammad Aiyub Mia said a massive rescue and relief operation was started as per the directives of Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed.

The Chief Adviser along with Army Chief General Moeen U Ahmed, Navy Chief Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam and Air Force Air Marshall Chief Shah Mohammad Abu Nayeem visited cyclone affected Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira districts.

Earlier, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed presided over a meeting of the National Disaster Management Council at his office. Members of the Advisory Council, Chiefs of three services and secretaries of the concerned ministries attended the meeting.

The Chief Adviser has already released Tk one crore in cash for relief works and ordered all district administrations to provide all help to the affected people.

He said there would be no dearth of resources to help the needy people.

The total number of (cyclone) vulnerable people in the 15 coastal districts is 3 crore 32 lakh. Of them 15 lakh were evacuated earlier to 2,148 cyclone shelters earlier and 1 crore 70 lakh took refuge in safer places of their own.

Officials, journalists and expert said the loss of human could be less than that of the previous super cyclones, including the one in 1991 and the other in 1970 due to the timely evacuation and warning measures.

However, many of the coastal people, who left the cyclone shelters for their homes after the storm found them flattened to the ground and returned to shelters again.

Meanwhile, World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nation yesterday sent detchpached 98 metric tones dry foods for the cyclone affected coastal people.

Staff Reporter

Cyclone Sidr put the National Power Grid in complete disarray for over 18 hours beginning at 2:00am on Friday leaving the entire country without power.

The cyclone that ripped through the central part of Bangladesh's coastline, uprooted trees, electric and telephone poles and towers, tore apart electric lines and led all the power generation units to shutdown, a Power Development Board (PDB) source told The New Nation. PDB engineers tried to put the generation units back into operation from the morning. But their attempts continued to be disrupted by unforeseen damages caused to the National Power Grid as well as the power stations by the ferocious cyclone.

Power supply was restored to a few areas in Dhaka city in the morning only to go off a couple of hours later. Another attempt to restore emergency supply to some high priority areas, including the Bangabhaban and the Chief Adviser's Office, in the afternoon similarly failed.

Late in the afternoon, two 50-megawatt power stations at Kaptai were put back to operation and several others by 8:20pm raising the total supply to about 750 megawatt, PDB sources said. They said their first target was to feed Dhaka with electricity.

The capital Dhaka consumes merely a half of the total generation of little over 4,000 megawatt of electricity against the pick hour demand of about 5,000 megawatt.

Replying to a question, PDB officials said that the cause of the National Power Greed failure was not identified instantly.

According to the PDB sources, at least 10 of the total power stations remain closed always for various reasons, including machinery faults.

The source said the Independent Power Plants (IPP), including Meghnaghat, Haripur, Khulna Barge mounted and Ghorashal generate most of the total power. Until the IPP's are activated, smooth power supply across the country is not possible, the sources added.

Dhaka Electricity Supply Authority (DESA) sources said, although the entire country was under blackout due to the National Power Greed failure after the Sidr hit, 170 megawatt of power was supplied to Dhaka from 8:01 am to 12:00 noon for emergency purposes. But due to the severe disruption, power supply was not continued.

According to sources, most of the daily newspapers could not be published while printing of several others was hampered due to the power disruption and natural disaster.

Accordingly, most of the business establishments could not be opened while electronic media could not run their programmes smoothly.

Due to the disruption in telephone and internet connection, communication was affected severely causing untold sufferings to thousands of people in the country.

Witnesses said, trees in their thousands and electric poles were uprooted and twisted tearing apart the electric lines, telephone lines, internet connections and dish line connections in the city and elsewhere in the country.

UNB, Khulna

After visiting some cyclone hit areas of Khulna division, Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed Friday allocated Tk 1 crore for each worst-affected districts in the division.

He announced the allocation at a view-exchange meeting, arranged to discuss ways to face the post-cyclone situation, at the conference room of BNS Titumir naval outpost here.

Government and non-government officials from Khulna division attended the meeting.

Addressing the meeting, the Chief Adviser said the number of casualty in the storm could be minimised by the necessary steps taken earlier with the joint efforts of both government and non-government officials.

The government would solve the problems in the worst-affected areas on priority basis, he said, assuring that there are sufficient resources to face the post-cyclone situation.

Dr Fakhruddin directed the concerned authorities to take steps so that none in the affected areas face any problem, particularly that of drinking water.

He also ordered to take necessary steps for the burial of those killed in the storm.

The head of the interim government asked the authorities concerned to take steps as per the requirement of the people in the affected areas.

Dr Fakhruddin told the meeting that a control room has been opened at the Disaster Management Ministry to monitor the overall situation round-the-clock.

Speaking on the occasion, Khulna Divisional Commissioner Yunus Rahman said five districts-Bagerhat, Satkhira, Khulna, Narail and Jessore-were worst hit in the cyclone.

Earlier, the Chief Adviser along with Chief of Army Staff General Moeen U Ahmed, Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal SM Ziaur Rahman and other high officials flew here by a helicopter at about 3:50 pm.

Prior to their landing, the Chief Adviser along with the others observed from the helicopter some areas affected badly by the cyclone.

Staff Reporter

Public sufferings in the city knew no bounds yesterday after the cyclone SIDR swept over the city at midnight Thursday causing extensive damage, especially severing power lines.

City dwellers remaind in dark for about 24 hours until filing of this report at 10:00 AM and still there was no confirmation of restoring electricity in the capital. Only the headlights of motorcars were seen lightening the streets at night yesterday in many parts of the city.

No electricity eventually led to a no-water situation in the city, as the water pumps are mainly dependent on electricity. A resident of Nikunja, Mamataj Begum said she could not cook anything yesterday, as there was no water and bought their meal from restaurant.

People who live in the footpaths of the city suffered most during the cyclone, as they could not get a place to cover their heads. As they do not have any warm clothes so they had to suffer in cold that was brought in by the gusty wind.

Students of different halls of Dhaka University could not even freshen up themselves as they found no water after waking up in the morning. Meanwhile, shop owners increasing the price of bottled mineral water taking the advantage of huge demand was also reported.

Restaurants of the city got crowded as people rushed to take food in those not being able to cook anything for the water crisis.

Long queues were seen in the CNG stations where people were seen waiting for long time hoping that electricity supply would resume soon. There were few CNG auto rickshaws running in the city yesterday.

Candles were one of the top priorities in the buying lists of the city dwellers but shop owners increased the price and were selling a stick of candle at Tk three per piece, which normally cost Tk two.

Sheikh Arif Bulbon

The National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedics Rehabilitation (NITOR), the country's biggest orthopaedic hospital for the treatment of bone diseases and rehabilitation of patients, is running short of physiotherapists.

According to the doctors and physiotherapists working at the hospital, at least 50 therapists are needed to handle the large number of patients coming to the hospital.

But not a single physiotherapist was recruited in the hospital in the last 25 years.

Earlier, the institution sanctioned 10 posts of physiotherapists, but the posts remain vacant till date and the hospital is providing treatment to the patients with severe shortage of manpower and equipment.

"One of the main aims of the institute is to prevent disability and to rehabilitate patients for which physiotherapy plays a vital role," said one of the two physiotherapists of the hospital.

After visiting the outdoor section and the Department of Physiotherapy of the hospital this correspondent found that though doctors were advising the patients for physiotherapy on a daily basis, patients were asked to come twice a week for physiotherapy due to lack of qualified manpower and required instruments.

Dr Kazi Humaun Kabir, Assistant Professor and Course Coordinator of Physiotherapy of the NITOR, said at present the hospital has only two qualified physiotherapists.

"As the service is given twice a week a patient, who needs one month's therapy, takes three to four months to complete the treatment. Besides, the irregular treatment ultimately may not give the desired result," said Dr Kabir.

Due to the lack of qualified physiotherapists, health technologists from the Institute of Health Technologists in Dhaka were being engaged to give therapy, he said.

Moreover, the two physiotherapists have to attend classes and do other administrative jobs as well, which hamper their duty at the hospital, he added.

Patients have to wait several days to get an appointment for treatment at the physiotherapy section of the hospital for shortage of manpower and equipment.

Dr Nazrul Islam, Lecturer of Physiotherapy and a physician of the hospital, said, "It is very hard to attend all the patients every day, as people from all over the country come to the hospital for orthopaedic treatment."

"On an average we have to attend to 50 patients a day which is very difficult for us. Apart from patients from Dhaka city, we get patients regularly from far flung areas of the country as there are no physiotherapists at the district level hospitals," he said.

At present, there are three traction machines, two Short Wave Diathermy (SWD) machines and one Ultra Sound Therapy (UST) at the physiotherapy centre. There were three Infra-red Ray Radiation (IRR) machines but now these are not working. Doctors said they need at least six SWDs and as many IRRs and USTs.

"Patients have to wait in queue for at least two hours to get a 10-minute heat therapy," said a duty doctor.

"Patients do not stay at this hospital for regular physiotherapy which is very important for rehabilitation and to prevent disability. NITOR is for rehabilitation but nothing significant is being done for the rehabilitation," he said.

At present, eight intern doctors are working in the hospital from 8:00am to 2:00pm - two in the outdoor section and six in wards where physiotherapy is given without using instruments. There are some assistant therapists who have passed diploma course. They work under the intern doctors.

In spite of the acute shortage of qualified physiotherapists, there were no recruitments to the vacant posts or no new post created in the last two decades.

The physiotherapy students who are doing graduation at the institute are not getting the opportunity to apply for the vacant posts, as the Public Service Commission (PSC) has not advertised for it. Some of them are working at the private sector and many brilliant students are leaving for developed countries where physiotherapists are in good demand.

Students of the institute said that there are only two permanent teachers, including the Principal, for the physiotherapy course under the Medicine Faculty of Dhaka University at present. At least six teachers and equal number of demonstrators are needed.

Rafiqul Islam Azad

An Australian plastic surgery team has successfully conducted 37 difficult plastic surgery operations in Dhaka Medical College Hospital during their 12-day-long visit to Bangladesh.

The operations were conducted under the Plastic Surgery Department of Dhaka Medical College Hospital from November 5 to November 15.

The team led by Miklos Pohl, sent by Interplast Australia, an international non-government organisation, conducted the operations, in particular, involving post-burn scan contructure, nasal reconstruction, ear reconstruction and facial reconstruction.

Dr Alfred Lewis, a senior plastic surgeon of the team, told The New Nation that they want to help Bangladesh to be more self-sufficient in plastic surgery treatment, particularly in dealing with difficult plastic surgical problems in future.

He appreciated the performance of Bangladeshi doctors working in this field saying that the doctors perform very well, particularly the trainee doctors are very hard working, helpful and very keen to learn.

In an exclusive interview Alfred Lewis said one of the major purposes of their visit to Bangladesh is to trace some of the most difficult plastic surgical problems being faced by doctors in Dhaka.

"What we really wanted to be doing is teaching the local doctors, the local surgeons, and the trainers how to do this procedure, which will be so useful for them to do for the population for the whole year," he said.

Replying to a question, he said Interplast Australia comes to Dhaka for four weeks every year. The rest of the time the local doctors have the ability to do these works themselves to make the country more self-sufficient in this area of specialisation.

He said the main sponsorship of the Interplast Australia, established about 25 years ago, is Australian overseas aid programmes through the Australian government.

The support also comes from Rotary International, the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons and Royal Australian College of Surgeons through money donations, he said, adding there is also a large contribution from individuals in Australia from Interplast fund raising activities in Australia.

Regarding the operations done by the team in DMCH plastic surgery operation theatre, the doctor said they have done 37 cases during the time and every case was very difficult and often lasted for three to four hours.

Alfred Lewis said the environment of the operation theatre, in his view, is not as good as expected because of the financial constraints and medical factors in a country like this.

He, however, said that organisationally it is quite well, as there are proper structure and supervision in the plastic surgery department.

"There is a professor, I have seen registrars and resident medical officers of different levels of training. All of them are from surgical background and capable of looking after the patients," he observed.

The actual theatre facilities are not expected to be here, the Plastic Surgeon said adding, the operating theatres are the area where the high tech costly equipment is very hard to come by, we for example, have to bring some expensive machines including the anesthetic monitoring equipment, he added.

Replying to another question, he said the Interplast goes to 30 different countries. It goes through the Pacific and Asia, even Australia, the western part of the Indian Ocean and it recently sent one delegation to Russia.

"I think, the truth is the British and the Europeans are doing their best supporting smaller devolving countries in Africa. America does a lot to help Great Britain, Europe and Australia in their regular plastic surgery programmes in developing countries," he said.

This is the first trip of the team in Bangladesh. The previous team came to Bangladesh six months ago. It sent two delegations in Bangladesh this year, one in plastic surgery unit and another in burns unit of DMCH.

Alfred Lewis said he has been very impressed by visiting Bangladesh.

"I have never seen such amazing population density and traffic jam ever before. It's a very lovely country, we felt extremely welcome here. Everyone we met is a polite, friendly and lovely person. This is the first Islamic country that we have visited and I am very impressed. We think that the country is terrific and we enjoyed every minute of our time," he said

The eight-member surgery team comprised of three plastic surgeons-Miklos Pohl, Alfred Lewis from Australia and Shailesh Vadodaria from London, anesthetist Dr Andrew Jowitt, nurses, Ms Fiona Podbury and Ms Naomi and occupational therapists-Ms Alison Hardman and Carolyn Flower.

Meanwhile, a doctor working in the plastic surgery department told this correspondent that another US hand surgery team will visit the DMCH and conduct operations from November 23.

UNB, Lahore

The government lifted the house arrest of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, police said Friday, hours before the arrival in Pakistan of a senior U.S. official expected to urge the country's military leader to end emergency rule. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf meanwhile pressed ahead with plans for parliamentary elections, despite the threat of an opposition boycott, by swearing in a caretaker administration. Police said the detention order against Bhutto was withdrawn overnight.

"The house is no longer a sub-jail but security will remain for her own protection. She's free to move and anyone will be able to go to the house," Zahid Abbas, a senior police official, told an Associated Press reporter near the barricaded house where Bhutto has been confined for three days.

However, trucks and tractors were still parked across the road leading to the house in the eastern city of Lahore early Friday, and police would not let reporters cross the cordon. Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister who returned from exile last month to launch a political comeback, was detained Tuesday to prevent her from leading a protest against Musharraf's Nov. 3 declaration of a state of emergency.

She has the highest profile among the thousands of political activists who have been detained in a government crackdown on dissent that sparked an outcry at home and abroad.

Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, insists he is still moving toward a restoration of democracy and civilian rule that Western governments believe could help stabilize the nuclear-armed country as it battles rising Islamic extremism.

At a ceremony in the capital, Islamabad, a somber-faced Musharraf said the outgoing Cabinet should be proud of having helped turn around the economy and move Pakistan back toward democracy.

"I take pride in the fact that, being a man in uniform, I have actually introduced the essence of democracy in Pakistan, whether anyone believes it or not," the general said after installing the caretaker ministers at the presidential palace.