began in March.<\/a><\/p>\nRecommended Stories list of 2 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Measles is a highly contagious disease that causes fever and a distinct rash, and has no specific treatment when caught. Severe cases can cause brain swelling and breathing problems.<\/p>\n
However, it can be prevented with two doses of vaccine. Infants too young to be vaccinated disproportionately contract and spread the disease. Children under the age of five accounted for more than 80 percent of cases early in the outbreak.<\/p>\n
\u2018Truly terrible situation\u2019<\/p>\n
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that the South Asian nation of 178 million is experiencing the largest outbreak of measles in the world.<\/p>\n
Professor Mahmudur Rahman, former director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Dhaka, told the Reuters news agency that the situation was unprecedented in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo my knowledge, Bangladesh has never witnessed so many children dying from measles. Nor have we ever seen such a high number of patients in a single year. This is a truly terrible situation, and the saddest part is that the victims are children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The WHO and UNICEF have linked the crisis to gaps in the nation\u2019s immunisation programme that emerged in 2024 and 2025, during the political turmoil that followed the ousting of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Bangladeshi Health Minister Sardar Husain told parliament that changes to procurement policy in that period created a vaccine shortage.<\/p>\n
Four million unvaccinated children<\/p>\n
A nationwide emergency vaccination drive, launched in April, vaccinated 18 million children. But official figures show roughly four million were never reached.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t achieve herd immunity,\u201d DGHS spokesman Zahid Raihan told the AFP news agency, saying that teams were still searching for children who had been missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeasles cannot be eradicated and the aim was to reduce casualties. We will keep vaccinating our children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The outbreak is straining hospitals that are simultaneously handling a surge in dengue fever. More than 45,000 people have been admitted for dengue, and Tuesday was a record day for both admissions and deaths from the disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials say a mass immunisation campaign missed millions of children as hospitals run out of beds. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5806,2458,49,48,84,44],"class_list":["post-889406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-asia","tag-bangladesh","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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