Bangladesh is struggling to control the world's worst measles outbreak. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 202,000 suspected cases had been recorded in the country up to 9 October this year, 22,000 of them confirmed in the laboratory. The disease has killed 1,147 people, 94 percent of them children under five. No other country has had as many suspected cases this year, Bangla Tribune reports.
The WHO says vaccination coverage must stay above 95 percent to prevent outbreaks, but Bangladesh's routine immunisation programme faltered in 2025 and coverage fell below that level. WHO documents and interviews with more than a dozen scientists, health workers and officials show that a lack of accurate information during the emergency left hundreds of thousands of children unvaccinated, while poor preparation and failure to reach parents with information hampered the emergency response.
"It's a real warning for every country," said Mark Jit, professor of global public health at New York University and an adviser to the WHO on vaccines. Preventing outbreaks through vaccination, he said, is far easier, cheaper and safer than responding once they start.
In Sylhet in July, two-year-old Arman Hossain, who had not been vaccinated, died within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital; his family had to sell their only asset, an auto-rickshaw, to pay for treatment. His father, Amin Mia, said no health worker came to the village to vaccinate on time. In Chhatak, nine-month-old Labiba Akter, daughter of Humayun Rashid, died unvaccinated in June; the emergency programme had lowered the vaccination age from nine to six months in April, but no one told the family.
In May, Health Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Hossain said the emergency campaign had brought infections in hotspots close to zero. Yet in September an average of 1,198 new cases a day were recorded, the highest since May. Measles normally kills two to three of every thousand people infected, the WHO says, but malnutrition and other factors make it deadlier in poorer countries. Experts say access to vaccines and awareness, rather than vaccine hesitancy, are the main barriers in Bangladesh.
Source: Bangla Tribune
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