Location: Bangladesh (Bhurungmari, Kurigram)

I am a medical student and currently undergoing a Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery. Besides that, I have been working on Mental Health & Addiction in my country Bangladesh for the last three years. I developed a project called “Mental Health & Addiction Project”, this project is also my independent research project for which I was selected as a Commitment Maker at the “Access to Healthcare” of the Clinton Global Initiative University 2020 and won the “Tiger Cage Challenge” at the National Youth Assembly 2020 in Bangladesh.

There are more than thousands of young people who suffer from depression, anxiety and any other mental issues along with addiction, got treatments and counseling till now under this project. I with my volunteer team also saved 6 lives who were severely depressed and attempted suicide 2-3 times, are now fully recovered. However, as an Organizer, when the COVID-19 Pandemic came to Bangladesh, I decided to work on this because we have a limited number of health workers in Bangladesh & it’s an overpopulated country.

To work on COVID-19 Pandemic, first of all, I decided to make a large number of volunteers who would actively work with me and started an organization named “Donate for Bhurungamari”. I made that & provided them training on “Standard Hygiene Measures” for COVID-19 by the WHO and “7 Steps of Handwashing”. After doing that, I saw the basic safety element to protect against COVID-19 is masks which is insufficient in my sub-district. So, I started making masks under the guideline of the Ministry of Health in Bangladesh. I started distributing the masks for free to our Volunteers and helpless, poor and affected people. Together we collected donations in order to provide foods and other necessary goods to the poor families who have been suffering from crises due to the lockdown. We also have been distributing food and goods to the COVID-19 affected individual and his or her families.

However, as I am a researcher, I decided to work with the health sector in order to provide physical & mental health services directly to the COVID-19 contaminated patients due to a lack of health workers in my community. We started providing physical and mental health services with the coordination of the local government administration, health complex and police. We distributed food items and goods to more than 400 families and provided health services to more than thousands of individuals where 7 were directly contaminated patients. A few days ago, there was a pregnant woman whose labor pain started and she was from a COVID-19 contaminated family. That's why no one had the courage to go there and deliver the baby. My team & I along with the police and the Health complex went there and did a successful delivery of the baby from the womb after 9 hours of working at night. It came into the newspaper in Bangladesh. That's how we have been working on this COVID-19 Pandemic on the ground despite having the risk of getting contaminated ourselves.

Support

In my Donate for Bhurungamari initiative, there are more than 300 volunteers have been working directly with the contact of the COVID-19 patients without having Personal Protective Equipment. For that, we need more than 10000 dollars to provide them PPE for their safety. I recently build a website for us. Now it's under maintenance and I am planning to start some fundraising campaigns on Facebook Fundraisers and Go Fund Me in order to collect the donations to buy PPE.

Other support: Volunteers

See more: https://donateforbhurungamari.com/

For more information contact covid19@unmgcy.org