Certificates that don’t state cause of death

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Impatient knocks on the door in the early morning jolted me from sleep. As I rushed to open the door in my pyjama and t-shirt, there stood Shumi Rani, a house help who lives in the same building and works at different flats. She was weeping.  

"Can you please come down and do something! Advocate shaheb is not responding. No one dares to come!"

The advocate shaheb was my landlord -- a nice soft-spoken gentleman in his late 60s with two rings and a pacemaker in his heart and inhaler-supported lungs. Since his mid-30s, he had been struggling with diabetes, arthritis and kidney problems.     

An income tax lawyer by profession and former leader of their association, he was blessed with three multi-storied residential buildings in Dhaka and well-connected. The acrylic emulsion-painted living room of his flat has a large photo in which he is seen handing over a crest to President Abdul Hamid at a function of tax lawyers. 

But his wealth and connections were not enough to secure a place in any hospital in the last few days. They refused to admit him without a coronavirus test as he was suffering from breathing problems!

When I checked his pulse and eyes, there was no sign of life. Immediately, I rang a physician friend and had a brief talk. I tried my best to appear hopeful, advising he be taken to hospital immediately.  

Sitting on the bed with her husband's hand in her lap, his wife looked somewhat perplexed. For the last few days, they had been taking him to different hospitals, only to be turned away. And his disease-wracked body could not withstand the negligence anymore.

"We went to the regular doctor once again last evening as his condition was deteriorating rapidly since Eid day. He needed to drain out water from his lungs, as the doctor said. But they would not admit him without the coronavirus test that we had requested for today," she said in a helpless voice. "My brother checked many places in the last few days, but no one agreed to admit him without the test."   

He could have survived, if he was not denied treatment.

The couple's elder son died 3 years ago from kidney-failure. The other son is an intellectually-disabled man in his early-30s.  

Soon, a relative came and an ambulance was called in.

The septuagenarian lawyer was again taken to a private hospital only to get a death certificate this time. They faced no problem in getting the certificate which read: He has been brought into the emergency room on 2/6/2020, at 9:30 am with Pulse: not palpable, BP: not recordable, Heart Sound: Absent, Pupil: Dilated, fixed and not reacting to light, ECG shows straight line and no electrical activity. Thus the patient declared as "brought dead".

No further details or a single word on the cause of death was stated.

We buried him at a public graveyard not far from Rayerbazar Martyred Intellectuals Memorial.

Such a sad end to a life! Maybe, he was Covid­-19 positive or maybe he was not. Nobody would ever know, as no test was done.

But one thing is evident; he was deprived of his fundamental right: a proper treatment. And that's the cause of the death, not written on the certificate.

The writer works as a development communication professional for UNDP.