Bangladeshi parents anxious about visa

Kolkata: A Bangladeshi couple, whose nine-month-old son got a fresh lease of life after a Kolkata hospital treated him for a rare disease, is now anxious about getting a visa to come to the city for the child’s post-surgery checkup.

The infant, Ridwan Habib Ilham, a resident of Jessore district of Bangladesh, was diagnosed with ‘Craniosynostosis’ in which the skull bones fuse prematurely hindering brain growth and eventually leading to an abnormal shape of the head. “We took our child to a private hospital in Kolkata and, following a successful reconstructive surgery, we brought him back to Bangladesh,” the baby’s father Ahsan Habib Rubel told a news agency from Benapole in the neighbouring country. But that was in June, a few weeks before Bangladesh was gripped by a crisis that forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and come to India in August.

Following this, the Indian government has restricted issuing visas to the people of the neighbouring country. A senior doctor in the hospital, where the child was treated, said that a period of six months post-surgery is crucial for such a patient. Doctors in the neighbouring nation diagnosed the child with ‘Craniosynostosis’ six months ago.