Child measles deaths in Bangladesh pass 1,000 as cases keep emerging

Bangladesh’s five-month measles outbreak has killed more than 1,000 children, and health authorities say new infections are still being recorded despite an emergency vaccination campaign launched in April.

The Directorate General of Health Services said Wednesday that three children died with measles symptoms in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning. In that same period, officials confirmed 69 measles cases, identified 1,119 children with symptoms, and admitted 1,034 patients to hospitals.

The government’s health services control room puts the total child death toll at 1,002 since the outbreak began on March 15. Among them, 100 were confirmed cases of measles; the remaining children died with symptoms of the disease, according to Dr. Zahid Rayhan of the health directorate.

Measles is a highly contagious viral infection that spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. It causes high fever, cough, red eyes and a distinctive blotchy rash, and symptoms typically appear 10 to 12 days after exposure. Severe complications include pneumonia and inflammation of the brain, and the disease can be fatal in young children, especially those who are unvaccinated or poorly nourished.

Since March 15, a total of 187,484 children have shown measles symptoms, according to government figures. Of these, 19,904 were diagnosed with measles, and 147,393 were admitted to hospitals. The directorate said 140,850 of those patients have been discharged.

In early April, Bangladesh’s government, supported by UNICEF, the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, began an emergency measles-rubella vaccination campaign. UNICEF said the effort was designed to protect more than 1.2 million children aged six months to five years in 18 of the country’s 64 districts. Since April, the government says it has administered more than 19.74 million vaccine doses through its Expanded Programme on Immunization.

Persisting outbreak, persistent gaps

Despite the scale of the campaign, deaths from measles and measles-like illness have continued. Experts fear that some of the country’s most vulnerable children are still not receiving the vaccine, and they have questioned whether the government is following a clear, workable plan to contain the outbreak.

Mushtuq Husain, a public health expert and former adviser at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Dhaka, said the situation should not have been a surprise. “It was foreseeable that such a situation could occur because the government launched the measles vaccination program based on old data,” he said.

He added that the government should have sent health workers door-to-door to collect information and determine how many children were genuinely in need of vaccination, rather than relying on earlier estimates.

The outbreak, now in its fifth month, has put renewed strain on Bangladesh’s hospitals and thrown a spotlight on wider gaps in routine immunization. The pandemic disrupted vaccination services around the world, and measles experts have warned that even small drops in coverage can trigger large outbreaks in densely populated countries. Bangladesh now appears to be living through that risk.