Cabinet approves the draft of "The Communicable Diseases Prevention, Control and Eradication Law, 2016"

The approval was given at the regular cabinet meeting held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

After the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam briefed reporters.

He said the new law is going to be framed with an aim to tackle a risk and emergency situation related to public health by checking, controlling and eradicating contagious diseases.

The cabinet secretary said another goal of the law is to protect the people from communicable diseases as well as taking proper measures to create mass awareness about the public health.

"The draft law aims to create mass awareness about the germs related diseases like Kala-Azar, HIV, Influenza, Nipah, Ebola, and Typhoid as well as other emerging or re-emerging diseases," he said.

Alam said the draft law was prepared merging the existing "The Bangladesh Malaria Eradication Board (Repeal) Ordinance, 1977" and "The Prevention of Malaria (Special Provisions) Ordinance, 1978".

As per earlier directives of the Supreme Court that had declared all martial law regime ordinances illegal, the draft law was placed before the cabinet translating the original ordinances into Bangla as well as widening the area of its jurisdiction to cover all the contagious diseases.

Under the proposed law, he said, a patient or an affected person will have to be screened and isolated to protect common people from infections.

Alam said the affected person will also have to be examined at related and specified institutes to detect and ascertain the type of diseases.

The cabinet in today's meeting also gave the final approval to draft of "The Cadet College Law, 2016" subject to vetting of the Law Ministry empowering the government to establish more cadet colleges in one or more places of the country through gazette notification.

He said, currently, there are 12 public cadet colleges in the country.

As per the draft law, there will be a Central Governing Council headed by the Defence Secretary that will work as central committee of all the committees of the Cadet Colleges to oversee their overall functioning, he said.

Besides, there will also be a College Governing Body with the Adjutant General with its chief to supervise the administrative activities of the cadet colleges.

The Central Governing Council can hold a meeting once or twice a year, while the College Governing Body can frequently sit in meetings to discuss the issues under its jurisdiction defined by the draft law.

The cabinet was also apprised of the participation of the fisheries and livestock minister for the "Pre-acceptance Inspection" of the fisheries and livestock minister to the fishery research and survey ship on April 6-11 'RV Meen Sandhani' which is under construction in Malaysia.

Besides, the participation of the environment and forests minister in the inaugural ceremony of high-level Paris Agreement Signing held at the UN headquarters on April 22, 2016 and the participation of a Bangladesh delegation, led by the education minister in the Global Education and Skills Forum held in Dubai on March 12-13, 2016 were apprised.

Ministers and state ministers concerned attended the meeting while secretaries concerned were present.