Socioeconomically disadvantaged population

Because of the Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19, the government has asked everyone to remain at home. In this situation, low-income people, day laborers have lost their scopes to earn and are leading a very miserable life. Many people are providing support and cooperation to address the situation. But at the same time, there are some problems arising in this situation. We need to solve these problems through innovation.

Problem Statement:
  • There is no scope to identify how many people in Bangladesh are in vulnerable situations and if they are receiving support.
  • Some people in the city may get support multiple times, while others in the countryside are getting deprived.
  • There is no way to measure whether the support an individual receives is sufficient for his/her family or for how long he/she can survive with it.
  • A large portion of government aid is believed to be affected by corruption at the grassroots level.
  • Many people want to provide financial help or food support to these vulnerable people. But due to the lack of a reliable platform, they are not able to do it.

Business operation & Production

Because of Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19, the government has asked everyone to stay home. In this situation, all kinds of small and large business activities have been halted. Industries and factories have been closed and production has stopped. As a result, the financial activities of people are being disrupted. In order to cope with this situation, we must innovate, through which all these production systems and small and medium industries can be restarted with the consideration of health status.

Problem Statement:
  • According to BGME's forecasts, the situation caused by the Coronavirus will affect workers. They are likely to lose their jobs receiving half the salary or no salary at all.
  • Most of the orders in the Readymade Garments Industry have been canceled. But even if some orders are still in place, keeping the garments open under current situations, the health of the workers are at a great risk.
  • Similarly, all large scale industries including the pharmaceutical industry, ship breaking industry, tea industry, leather industry, steel industry, etc. have been closed.
  • Small and medium industries of the country; such as poultry industry, farm, packaging industry, motor parts, and machinery industry, small entrepreneurs of the tourism industry, small vendors of different hardware or machinery parts have been forced to stop production or trade.
  • There is a problem arising in the management of the supply of agricultural products. Farmers are selling their products at very low prices, but there is a demand for these products everywhere.

Health care Equipment & Treatment

Ensuring citizens' health care is a major responsibility of any state. The healthcare sector in the country is under major pressure under the pandemic situation. Despite having no government instruction, many private health care institutions have been closed. Many people are unable to follow their normal healthcare routine. Many people in this country travel to neighboring countries or abroad for treatment. But due to travel ban, this is not possible. This has created a massive crisis in the health care sector. Moreover, we are lacking sufficient PPE, hand sanitizer, mask, ICU, CCU, ventilator which are mandatory for protection.. Due to lack of adequate testing kit, PPR machine, biosafety level three lab, trained sample collector, virologist and skilled lab technician, satisfactory amount of testing has not been done yet. This problem needs to be solved through innovation.

Problem Statement:
  • Due to the closure of garments, PPE and mask cannot be made locally. Again, there are issues about the quality of the masks that are available in the market.
  • Because of not having sufficient PPE, doctors have been asked to use the same PPE several times, which is very risky. Also, the safety of ambulance drivers, army, security personnel, administration personnel who are working at ground level can not be ensured because of shortage of PPE.
  • The number of ICUs, CCUs and ventilators in all public and private hospitals is insufficient. If this capacity is not being increased, it will not be possible to provide intensive medical care to general people.
  • Hospitals specialized for COVID - 19 disease are unable to accept everyone as they cannot manage the pressure of inbound patients.. As patients are receiving treatment by hiding symptoms of COVID -19, doctors, nurses and ICUs of the hospitals have to be put under quarantine.
  • There is a lack of PPR machines, biosafety level three labs, trained sample collectors, virologists and skilled lab technicians.
  • Collecting and testing samples from outside Dhaka has become quite complicated and time-consuming.

Access to Information

Various statistics show that around 600,000 migrants came to Bangladesh from different countries of the world in the last two months. Many of them came from countries highly affected by Coronavirus. Most of these people did not maintain Home Quarantine. Again, according to data from IEDCR, the virus is now at the stage of community transmission. In this situation, there is a high risk of transmission of the corona virus throughout the country. Therefore, a mechanism or tool needs to be created so that the number of victims, how many people are in critical condition, where they have been infected, in which area they have been affected as well as people returned from abroad, people living at home, people living abroad, open shop all these information can be kept in live data.

Problem Statement:
  • The statistics showing the exact number of people who have returned from abroad after pursuing livelihood, travelling, treatment or vacation in the last two months, and identifying all of these people could not be possible.
  • In the changing situations of the country, most of the people returned from abroad have hidden themselves. So, many cannot be traced
  • No track cannot be kept of the whereabouts of the suspected people, or how many people they have come in contact with.
  • Hotspots for community transmission have not yet been identified.
  • The actual condition of people with illness who are not coming to the doctor remains unknown.

Mental Health

Unless any emergency, people are urged to stay home to avoid the risk of infection due to Novel Coronavirus and to reduce the amount of community transmission. To ensure social distancing, the army, including the administration, have been deployed. Most people are staying at home. But the problem is that it cannot be predicted how long this situation will last. People are already tired of staying indoors and getting deprived of regular life activities. The mental health of general people is likely to be highly affected due to epidemic concerns, various negative news spreading in social media, economic downturn, loss of business and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to restore the mental health of all these people coping with the overall situation.

Problem Statement:
  • Stuck at home, people are spending unproductive time, being away from their daily work or daily routine.
  • People stuck at home are taking a longer time to do non-productive work.
  • People stuck at home are in uncertainty about health and economic concerns
  • Most of the people have no idea about what to do in a lockdown situation.
  • There are no tools and resources to provide psychological counseling to so many people at once.

Open Idea

There are many other issues besides the above-mentioned problems which you can propose in relevance with your solution.