“My little daughter used to fall asleep wrapped in my arms… I would hold her close to my chest. Now I cannot sleep at all. I keep thinking—what is my daughter doing? Is she afraid, all alone…?”
Through tears and long pauses, Zakia recounts the loss of her eight-month-old daughter, Jannat—taken by complications from measles and pneumonia, leaving her family in quiet devastation.
“If she woke up and did not see me, she would cry and search for me. Now… no one looks for me anymore,” she says.
Jannat died at around 4pm on April 13 at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Mohakhali, Dhaka—just one day before she was to turn eight months old. What should have been a day of celebration on April 14 became a day of mourning.
“My Jannat has left us… my chest feels completely empty,” Zakia says, breaking down.
Jannat was the only child of Zakia and Roman Pathan. The couple had already endured the pain of losing another child during pregnancy. After years of treatment, prayers, and waiting, Jannat was born—bringing hope back into their lives.
“To bring her into this world, how much I suffered… how many prayers I said, how much money I spent—just so that my daughter could live, healthy and safe,” Zakia says.
Her parents remember her as a lively child, with bright eyes and a gentle, sweet face. She had just begun to respond to them.
“She would stretch out her hands as soon as she saw me… she was trying to say ‘Baba,’” Roman recalls.
About a month ago, she fell ill.
The family first sought treatment at Araihazar Hospital, then at Matuail Hospital, where she was admitted for 15 days after doctors detected fluid in her head.
“She suffered so much… then she got a little better. We thought she would recover,” Zakia says.
But after returning home, her condition worsened again—fever, cough, and cold setting in. At Suhrawardy Hospital, doctors diagnosed measles and pneumonia but could not admit her due to a shortage of beds. The same response followed at the Children’s Hospital.
“I held the doctors’ feet and begged them… we came from a village… if you do not treat her, where will we go?” Roman says.
Finally, on April 9, Jannat was admitted to the Infectious Diseases Hospital—forced to stay on the floor due to the lack of beds.
“I said I would get her treated even on the floor,” Roman adds.
Treatment began, but her condition declined rapidly.
“The nurses told me I could not give her any food… my daughter wanted to eat… she would look at my face… but I gave her nothing out of fear… she suffered so much,” Zakia says.
Roman alleges that nurses sometimes asked them to administer oxygen themselves and questions the reliability of monitoring equipment.
“When the machine showed 99, and then 60 when removed, it felt like something was not right,” he says.
The family says they repeatedly asked about ICU support, but no immediate steps were taken.
On Monday, Jannat’s condition suddenly worsened—she began convulsing, struggling to breathe.
A senior doctor, after examining her, reportedly said: “Why is this child here? She should have been in ICU.”
Soon after, the family was told her condition was critical.
“Before she died, she stretched out both her hands—once toward her father, once toward me… I held her… and then she was gone,” Zakia recalls.
Now, the silence at home is unbearable.
“I took my living daughter to the hospital… but I came back with her lifeless body,” she says. “I could not save my piece of heart.”
She says her daughter wanted to eat in her final days, but she held back, following medical advice.
“I thought I would feed her properly once she got better… but she never did.”
Even in death, Zakia says, Jannat looked “like a perfectly healthy baby, lying peacefully.”
A preventable disease—measles—has taken away the family’s only child, leaving behind what Zakia describes as a void “that will never be filled.”
