Shefali Begum - her worries are easing

Shefali Begum has received offers of help from around the world and within Bangladesh after the BBC reported on her desperate newspaper advertisement.

Now Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has met her and arranged measures to support her, including a new house.

Ms Begum said she had no money for rent or to feed her daughter.

The 26-year-old mother lives with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in a tiny bamboo and corrugated-tin room in the east of the capital, Dhaka.

She says her husband of four years left her in March, leaving her penniless.

'So moved'

Prime Minister Zia has now met Ms Begum in her Dhaka office, her officials say.

"The prime minister was so moved by her story that she instantly decided to help this woman who has been abandoned by her husband," a spokesman for the prime minister told the BBC.

Mother and daughter - their room has no furniture

Officials say Ms Zia made arrangements to allocate Ms Begum in a house in a government-built shelter for the poor.

She also assured her that the government would provide financial assistance for her daughter's educational expenses. She will also receive the monthly allowance claimable by women abandoned by their husbands.

Officials also say the prime minister gave her some cash to pay for job training.

Ms Begum later told the officials that she would not now have to sell her eye after receiving help from the prime minister and many others anonymous donors.

The BBC in Bangladesh has also received calls and e-mails from all over the world offering to help Ms Begum after her story was broadcast by the BBC Bengali section and published on the BBC News website.