Pollution, traffic, noise – the busy streets of the Bangladeshi capital prohibit many who are ill or have limited mobility from leaving their homes, posing further risks to their health
The door of Rehana Khan’s sixth-floor flat is as far as she ventures during the day. On most days, she barely leaves her bed. The city outside is too chaotic and overwhelming for her.
NCDs are simply that; unlike, say, a virus, you can’t catch them. Instead, they are caused by a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors. The main types are cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, diabetes and cardiovascular disease – heart attacks and stroke.
In low-income countries NCDs – typically slow and debilitating illnesses – are seeing a fraction of the money needed being invested or donated. Attention remains focused on the threats from communicable diseases, yet cancer death rates have long sped past the death toll from malaria, TB and HIV/Aids combined.
“I don’t like it here. There’s nothing here for me. My son and his wife leave for the office early in the morning and it’s just me. I have no friends, no husband. I don’t have much connection with the neighbours like I do in the village. But I’m forced to stay here because I have no other option.”Pedestrians are forced to walk among the traffic while roadworks are undertaken in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Zaman occasionally goes to the village to visit his relatives but much of his day is spent in his son’s flat and the balcony where he sits reading the newspaper.Photograph: Abir Abdullah/The Guardian Most neighbourhoods have very little access to green spaces, which covered 47% of the city in 1992 but that fell to 16% in 2022, according toDebra Efroymson, who runs the Institute of Wellbeing, a Bangladeshi NGO, says the city needs to be rethought, with the priority taken away from cars to improve residents’ quality of life.
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