Aged only two and a half years, Fatema Lamia has had chickenpox once and fever several times, each time recovering without treatment.
In the first few months of her life, her resilience to diseases impressed her mother and neighbours living in a slum on Gabtoli Beri Bandh in the capital.
But her fourth battle, against a fever, seems tougher. After more than a week when she was still down with it, neighbours asked her mother to use neem leaves as a medication.
The poor mother, Shahnaz Begum, who earns only Tk 1,300 a month by supplying water to two restaurants, had no alternative but to apply that "medication" on July 31.
"I collected some neem leaves and covered her as she slept," said Shahnaz.
She missed her heartbeat for a moment when she saw a huge crowd where she left Lamia. She ran madly only to find her daughter sitting in the midst of the crowd. The crowd told her that a photojournalist had taken a picture of her daughter.
It was a photojournalist from The Daily Star, which carried the photo in its front page yesterday.
The photo drew the attention of the health ministry that ordered its officials to ensure the girl's treatment.
Following the order, Mushfiqur Rahman, deputy civil surgeon of Dhaka, rushed to the slum and had her admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the afternoon.
"Her fever is coming down. We will have her thoroughly examined tomorrow [today] and see if she has other problems," said Rahman.
Lamia, whose father left her pregnant mother, has never got so much care and attention before.
Her elder sister Poly Akter, 11, works in a garment factory at city's Mirpur.
Shahnaz, the 30-year-old single mother, was forced to send her little girl to work for money. Poly gets Tk 1,200 per month.
The earning of the mother and the daughter combined, however, cannot buy them two meals a day.
Of the Tk 2,500 of their income, Tk 2,000 is spent for food and Tk 500 for slum rent.
Shahnaz hailed from Mehendiganj of Barisal about 16 years ago failing to cope with the poverty in a family where her father married twice.
But she failed to make any luck after being deceived twice in her marriage. Both her husbands married her concealing the information of their previous marriages, she said.
"My only dream is to have Lamia educated. I feel very bad sending my elder daughter to work. I need a job," said Shahnaz sitting by the hospital bed of her daughter.
Source : The Daily Star
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