As the clock struck one at the conference room of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) yesterday afternoon, the only sound one could hear was the fierce clicking of cameras.
The centre of all that attention was oblivious to the effect she was having on a room full of doctors and journalists. She was busy taking in everything around her.
While the 27-day-old was busy watching anything and everything, her care-givers for the most of her short life, the doctors at the neonatal department of the DMCH, finished all formalities to give her a home at Chhotomoni Nibash, an orphanage run by the Department of Social Services.
DMCH Director Brig Gen Mizanur Rahman, Neonatal Department Head Dr Abid Hossain and Neonatal Surgery Head Dr Ashraful Haque officially handed her over to Selina Akhtar, deputy coordinator of Chhotomoni Nibash.
What the little girl has survived is horrifying. Her parents abandoned her the moment she was born. Some children playing inside the old airport in the capital’s Tejgaon area found her in a bush on September 15, her tiny finger almost bitten off by dogs, more dog bites in her face. The children then informed a local resident named Jahanara Begum, who took the badly injured infant to the DMCH.
The little girl won the fight for her life, but the doctors say her recovery will take a long time. “She needs surgery to reconstruct her finger, lip and nose, but we will have to wait until she is three months old,” said Mizanur Rahman, adding that the entire expense of her treatment would be taken care of by the hospital.
He further said Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim had informed him that the government would carry all expenses of the baby’s treatment.
“I hope she gets adopted by a loving family with parents who will adore her,” he said.
Anyone who wished to adopt her would have to get court permission, he added.
In the DMCH conference room when the doctors handed her over to Chhotomoni Nibash, they named her Faiza, which means “conqueror.”
“She overcame a number of barriers and survived. The name suits her,” they said.
