Six members of a family in Puthia upazila of Rajshahi are suffering from a rare genetic condition of having no fingerprints on their hands.
Due to having no prints on their fingers, the family members face various problems regarding their identities and official activities.
According to sources, only four families have been identified worldwide so far without having prints on their fingertips. The Puthia family is one of them.
Amal Sarker of Pachamaria village under Shilmaria Union is one of the persons bearing the rear symptom of living without any fingerprints. Such a symptom has been identified as a hereditary disease. Many daily activities in the world, including in Bangladesh, are
being carried out in a digital way and the people suffering from the symptoms are facing hurdles in every step of their day-to-day activities. Even, some one or two decades ago, the use of fingerprints was not so much necessary but nowadays, fingerprints are being used widely. At present, most of the Biometric information is collected through the fingerprints of a human being.
Amal Sarker said his father and grandfather also suffered from the same symptoms while his two brothers bear the same problem. His elder brother Gopesh works at a Hospital in Dinajpur. He cannot put a fingerprint on the daily attendance register. Instead, he put a signature there. Issuance of a passport for Gopesh was also delayed for two years for such complications. He had to visit the Dhaka Passport office several times to convince the concerned officials that he was without fingerprints. For the same reason, the driving licence of his motorbike has not yet been issued.
Opu Sarker, 22, elder son of Amal Sarker, said his father has been carrying the symptom or the disease, which has been inflicted on him and his younger brother. Even, two sons of his elder uncle and the younger uncle are suffering from the same symptoms or diseases.
Opu Sarker further said his family faced hurdles when the government started to collect fingerprints for issuing national identity (NID) cards in 2008. While they failed to make a fingerprint on the forms concerned, the on-duty employees engaged in collecting the fingerprints failed to understand how to identify them. Later, they talked to the high officials concerned and it was mentioned in their NIDs that they have no fingerprints. In 2016, it was made mandatory to take a fingerprint for issuing a SIM card of the mobile phone and they faced fresh troubles.
Opu Sarker said his father and two of his brothers are now using a SIM card issued by the name of their mother. Anu Sarker, 17, the younger brother of Opu, said he has been facing various troubles for having no fingerprint.
Opu Sarker said he consulted with dermatologist Professor Peter Etin in this connection. Failing to put a fingerprint, a Swedish woman passenger faced hurdles at an Airport in the USA when she contacted dermatologist Professor Peter Etin in 2007. She was the first such patient to Professor Etin. Later, a team of researchers conducted a study on 16 members of the family of the woman and detected the hereditary-related disease of having no fingerprints among them. The researchers termed the disease as Immigration Delay Disease (IDD).
In 2011, dermatologist Professor Etin along with some researchers published a research article on the disease. They identified genetic mutations as responsible for such hereditary or genetic problems. They identified four families worldwide suffering from such symptoms.
