Dhaka – A four-year-old Bangladeshi boy suffering from a mysterious illness that makes him look like an old man has been admitted to hospital for tests, doctors and his family said.

Doctors at a top hospital in Dhaka have agreed to try to diagnose and treat Bayezid Shikdar, who comes from a poor farming family, for free after learning of his plight on the weekend.

Born with excess skin that hangs from his limbs and face causing it to sag, Bayezid also suffers from related heart, vision and hearing problems.

His father, Lablu Shikdar, said numerous doctors have been at a loss to explain his condition.

“We sold our land to treat him at local hospitals. We took him to religious healers and herbal doctors, but his condition did not change. This hospital is our last hope,” Shikdar told AFP at Dhaka Medical College Hospital this week.

“We hope they’ll make him look like any other normal child.”

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Doctors initially suspected he suffered from progeria which causes rapid and premature ageing shortly after birth, leading to severe health complications.

The extremely rare genetic disorder was the subject of Hollywood movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” starring Brad Pitt.

But doctors at the Dhaka hospital expressed caution, saying extensive tests were needed.

“In progeria, the ageing process accelerates with time,” Abul Kalam, head of the hospital’s burns and plastic surgery unit, told AFP on Monday.

“But Bayezid’s parents have said the ageing of their boy has been halted recently. He has shown signs of improvement.

“We’re investigating his condition. In addition to loose skin, he has problems in his heart, ear, eyes and penis.”

Doctors said his genetic condition may also be the result of inbreeding, with marriage among relatives including first cousins common in Bangladesh’s rural areas.

Bayezid’s mother, Khatun, stressed that her son was just like any other child.

“He is very fond of fish and rice. He plays football and hide and seek with his cousins,” she told AFP after her son’s case was highlighted in Bangladesh media on the weekend.

“When I first saw him he looked like a bundle of skin. We had no idea what he was afflicted with. We thought the condition would go away soon.

“He is an extremely talented boy. There are days he grabs books and wants to go to school. But we thought he’s still too young.”

Doctors at the same hospital have also been treating a 26-year-old father dubbed “Tree Man” for the rare and massive bark-like growths on his hands and feet.

Manila – Philippine officials said on Tuesday the government would build new jails to address severe congestion made worse by President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, describing conditions as “inhumane” and “unacceptable”.

AFP photographs of Quezon City Jail, where thousands of inmates take turns to sleep on an open-air basketball court and a staircase, were an “eye-opener” for the authorities to hasten the construction of a new facility, according to vice-mayor Joy Belmonte.

Quezon City officials Monday signed an agreement to donate land to the national government for a new prison. The facility in the northern district of Manila would replace the jail built six decades ago for 800 inmates but now houses almost 4,000.

“The photos are really unacceptable. Seeing inmates sleep on top of each other because of the lack of space, I feel it’s a violation of human rights, an urgent matter that must be addressed,” Belmonte told AFP.

“It’s good that this is exposed before the international reading public as an eye-opener,” added the vice-mayor, who said she had heard reports of overcrowding before but visited the facility for the first time in July with an AFP photographer.

Human Rights Watch criticised the conditions last week, saying it was “straight out of Dante’s ‘Purgatory'”, referring to the 13th century Italian writer’s description of the realm where souls await judgment.

Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno told AFP the government would allocate funds to build new jails, with 80 per cent of new detainees accused of drug-related crimes resulting from Duterte’s crackdown.

Worsening conditions in one of Philippine’s most crowded jails

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AFP

Duterte, who took office on June 30, ordered a bloody war on crime that has left 889 people dead since the May elections, according to the country’s largest broadcaster ABS-CBN.

Police have reported arrested more than 5,000 people for drugs offences as part of the campaign.

Sueno said his department was also planning the construction of more rehabilitation centres.

“(President Duterte) is really concerned not just about arrests but also the rehabilitation of drug addicts,” the minister said.

Even before Duterte’s presidency, the Philippine penal system was ranked as the third most congested in the world, according to the University of London’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research.

In Quezon City, the government is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross to finalise the design for a new facility that can house 6,000 inmates by 2019.

“It’s a modern facility and we want it to be on par with other jails in Southeast Asia,” Xavier Solda of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology told AFP.

Tokyo – The Japanese city of Nagasaki on Tuesday marked 71 years since its destruction by a US atomic bomb, with its mayor lauding a visit by US President Barack Obama to Hiroshima earlier this year.

A bell tolled as thousands of people, including ageing survivors and relatives of victims, observed a minute’s silence at 11:02am, the exact moment of the blast.

Some 74,000 people died in the initial explosion, while thousands of others perished months or years later from radiation sickness.

The attack came three days after the US dropped the first ever atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which ultimately killed 140,000 people.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue lauded Obama’s landmark May visit to Hiroshima – the first ever by a sitting US president.

“Knowing the facts becomes the starting point for thinking about a future free of nuclear weapons,” Taue said, calling on other world leaders to visit his city.

Local officials and those who survived the bombing called for strict adherence to Japan’s post-war tradition of pacifism and were critical of the Japanese government.

“The government of Japan, while advocating nuclear weapons abolition, still relies on nuclear deterrence,” the mayor said, calling it a “contradictory state of affairs”.

Toyokazu Ihara, 80, who survived the Nagasaki bombing, used his address to call for abolition of nuclear weapons and world peace.

“Nagasaki must be the last,” he said, concluding his Japanese remarks with an English sentence intended for global citizens.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 70 years after the bombings

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Reuters

Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui on Saturday marked the commemoration of the bombing of his city, also citing Obama’s visit.

He said the visit was proof the US President shared his city’s view of the “absolute evil” of nuclear weapons.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in his address in Nagasaki, called on world leaders to honour the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“We must not allow a repeat of the horrible experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that happened 71 years ago,” Abe said.

Abe has moved to extend the scope of Japan’s military and deepen the nation’s alliance with Washington in the face of threats from China’s expanding military strength and unpredictable North Korea.

North Korea last week test fired a ballistic missile that landed in waters off Japan’s coast for the first time.

Japan marks 71st anniversary of Hiroshima bombing

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Reuters, AFP