In the face of criticism, Health and Family Welfare Minister, Zahid Maleque, is cutting short his trip to Malaysia and coming back on Wednesday (Jul 31) night.

He is expected to brief the media on the dengue outbreak on Thursday (Aug 1), informed communication official of the health ministry, Maidul Islam.

With the deterioration of the dengue situation, the health minister went to Malaysia on Jul 27 for personal reasons. He was supposed to come back on Aug 4 but on Tuesday, Bangla Tribune carried a report with the heading: Where’s the health minister amidst dengue outbreak? At that time, Maidul Islam had said that the minister is in his Manikganj constituency distributing relief among the flood-affected people.

The deputy commissioner of Manikganj, however, said that if a minister came then he would have been informed. By this time, the same communication person said that the health minister is coming back at night truncating his Malaysia trip.