A measles outbreak in Bangladesh has killed more than 500 children in the deadliest surge there in decades.<\/p>\n
The death toll continued to rise on Saturday, with 13 children passing away in the past 24 hours alone, increasing the total to 512, according to a health department tally that began on March 15.<\/p>\n
Hospitals in the capital Dhaka, which have been overwhelmed with cases, have set up dedicated wards but lack sufficient numbers of intensive care beds.<\/p>\n
Measles, which has no specific treatment once caught, is a highly contagious viral disease that spreads through coughs and sneezes.<\/p>\n
The disease primarily affects children and can cause severe complications, including pneumonia, brain inflammation and death, particularly among malnourished or unvaccinated children.<\/p>\n
It remains one of the leading causes of vaccine-preventable child deaths worldwide.<\/p>\n
The South Asian nation of 175 million people has rolled out a mass vaccination drive to combat the outbreak. United Nations children\u2019s agency (UNICEF) country chief Rana Flowers said this week that the campaign has reached 18 million children.<\/p>\n
But the health department said the full impact of the vaccinations would take months to be felt.<\/p>\n
UNICEF said on Wednesday that gaps in immunisation worsened during and after the chaos of the 2024 student-led uprising that toppled the government, leaving large numbers of children unprotected.<\/p>\n
The health department\u2019s death toll comes after the government said the outbreak was now contained, noting a decline in cases in several previously hard-hit areas.<\/p>\n
Most cases recorded during the current outbreak have been among children aged between six months and five years.<\/p>\n
Doctors say many of the children arriving at hospitals were already critically ill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough measles is highly contagious, a healthy baby with no complications can survive with minimal medication,\u201d Ainul Islam Khan, a paediatrician at Dhaka\u2019s Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, most children came to the hospital with respiratory distress and infections in the eyes, throat and lungs.\u201d<\/p>\n
UNICEF stressed the need to boost vaccination programmes and increase funding for health facilities, surveillance and data systems in the future.<\/p>\n
A policy brief published on Thursday by the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership warned that vaccination gaps could worsen antimicrobial resistance in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A measles outbreak in Bangladesh has killed more than 500 children in the deadliest surge there in decades.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11497,1061,54614,134,226508,111,139,69,43591],"class_list":["post-443571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bangladesh","tag-children","tag-death-toll","tag-health","tag-highly-contagious","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-unicef"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}