Dhaka, Bangladesh, recorded its highest daily death toll of 17 children on Monday as a measles outbreak spreads rapidly across the country, with health officials saying the highly contagious disease has so far killed more than 300 people in the past 50 days.
A spokesman for the Directorate-General of Health Services said on Monday: “A further 17 children have died from measles or its symptoms across the country in the past 24 hours.”
He said that during the same period, 1,456 patients with measles symptoms were admitted to hospitals across the country. Laboratory tests confirmed that 154 of them were infected with measles.
Two weeks ago, the World Health Organization officially assessed the ongoing measles outbreak in the South Asian country as a “high” national risk and warned that the measles epidemic would continue to spread unless urgent measures were taken to close the “immunization gap.”
Bangladesh’s new Nationalist Party government led by Prime Minister Tariq Rehman launched a nationwide emergency campaign on April 20 to vaccinate some 180,000 children between 6 months and under 5 years old.
Two days ago, Health Minister Sardar Sakhawat Husain claimed that measles was now under control, with mortality rates falling sharply and the death toll hitting a record high, thanks to adequate vaccine supplies and smooth distribution across the country.
He said more than 81% of children have been vaccinated against measles and the government is working to achieve 100% coverage as soon as possible.
Bangladesh has had an Expanded Program on Immunization with measles vaccination at its core for decades, and the country’s performance in controlling the disease from 2000 to 2019 is widely considered a global success story.
Over the past 19 years, the number of deaths has dropped sharply and vaccination coverage has been high. In 2018, Bangladesh officially achieved the measles-rubella control target and was confirmed to have blocked the endemic transmission of certain strains in the process of moving towards complete elimination of measles.
But that success story came to an abrupt end in 2026 due to vaccine shortages, a failure that officials attributed to vaccine shortages between 2024 and 2025 under the previous interim government led by Muhammad Yunus.
Prime Minister Rahman called the failures of past regimes “destroying lives” and “unforgivable crimes.”
Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, the BNP’s health minister, said the measles outbreak occurred “due to the interim government’s failure to provide vaccines on time.”
“UNICEF is deeply concerned by the sharp increase in measles cases across Bangladesh, which puts thousands of children, especially the youngest and most vulnerable, at serious risk,” Rana Flowers, UNICEF representative in Dhaka, said in a recent statement.
Flowers said the resurgence “highlights serious immunity gaps, particularly among zero-dose and undervaccinated children, and infections in infants under nine months of age who are not yet eligible for routine vaccinations are particularly concerning.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said that without rapid scaling up of vaccinations and response measures, transmission “is likely to continue to expand, putting further pressure on health services and increasing the risk of serious health consequences in children”.
“Changes to the government’s vaccine purchasing system after the 2024 revolution have led to nationwide vaccine shortages and immunity gaps,” Science, a peer-reviewed weekly published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in its latest issue.
On August 5, 2024, a violent student-led street protest known as the July Uprising ousted then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (of the now-defunct Awami League) and installed Yunus as leader of the unelected regime.
The report in Science magazine reads: “This country of more than 175 million people has long prided itself on its high vaccination rate, and the epidemic stemmed from the catastrophic collapse of vaccine procurement in the country after the 2024 revolution.”
It was titled “Measles outbreak kills hundreds of children in Bangladesh after vaccination failure”.
Dhaka Central District, which includes the capital, is the worst affected by the measles outbreak, followed by the northwest district of Rajshahi, but other areas have also been hit by the disease, officials said.
Health experts said the measles death toll reported by DGHS on Monday was the highest in decades, while officials said more than 45,000 measles cases have been recorded since March 15.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
