SYLHET, Bangladesh: Bangladesh is battling to contain the world\u2019s worst measles outbreak, a crisis exacerbated by weak data, inadequate outreach and vaccination gaps that experts say offers a warning to other nations about the deadly risk of falling immunization rates.<\/p>\n
Bangladesh, whose routine vaccination program faltered in 2025, reported 202,000 suspected measles cases \u2013 22,000 of them laboratory-confirmed \u2013 since the start of the outbreak in mid-March to October 9, the World Health Organization \u200bsaid. That\u2019s more suspected cases than any other country this year.<\/p>\n
So far, 1,147 people have died of the highly contagious disease, with 94 percent of reported deaths among children under five years old, the WHO said.<\/p>\n
Bangladesh\u2019s experience shows the challenge of containing an outbreak when vaccination coverage falls below 95 percent, a level the WHO says is needed to prevent outbreaks. Bangladesh almost achieved that in recent years but in 2025 coverage dropped.<\/p>\n
A Reuters review of WHO documents, alongside interviews with more than a dozen scientists, health workers and officials, shows Bangladesh was also hampered in its emergency response by data that left out millions of children, shortcomings in preparation and a failure to reach enough parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a real warning to every country,\u201d said Mark Jit, a WHO vaccine adviser and professor at the School of Global Public Health at New York University.<\/p>\n
Preventing an outbreak through vaccinations was easier, cheaper and safer than responding to an emergency, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe response will stop the outbreak eventually, but in the meantime, many will have had measles, and some will have died,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ziauddin Hyder, special assistant on health affairs to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, told Reuters in September the government was doing everything it could to end the outbreak. The government did not respond to further questions sent in October for this article.<\/p>\n
\u2018THEY CAME ONLY AFTER I BURIED MY SON\u2019<\/p>\n
In the northeast Sylhet region, one of the worst-hit areas in the nation of 178 million people, two-year-old Arman \u200cHossain died unvaccinated in July, 24 \u200chours after admission to hospital for treatment paid for by selling the family\u2019s three-wheeled auto rickshaw. His unvaccinated four-year-old sister survived.<\/p>\n
His father Amin Mia, 26, \u200bsaid \u200cno health \u2060workers came \u200bto their remote \u2060village in Sylhet to offer vaccinations in time. \u201cThey came only after I buried my son,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Measles usually kills two or three people in every 1,000 cases, the WHO says, but the disease can be more deadly in poorer nations because of factors such as malnutrition.<\/p>\n
In the town of Chhatak, also in the Sylhet region, the daughter of 30-year-old carpenter Humayun Rashid died unvaccinated in June aged nine months. Labiba Akter could have received an inoculation in April when an emergency program lowered the vaccination age to six months from nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo health worker came to tell us,\u201d her father said.<\/p>\n
In May, Health Minister Sardar Md. Sakhawat Husain said the emergency drive had brought cases in hotspots \u201calmost to zero\u201d and the outbreak was under control.<\/p>\n
Yet in September, Bangladesh reported a daily average of 1,198 new cases of measles, which causes a high fever, cough and telltale rash. That was the highest total since May.<\/p>\n
The Bangladesh outbreak comes as vaccine hesitancy is rising, particularly in wealthier nations, amid skepticism championed by figures such as US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n
In Bangladesh, access to inoculations and awareness are bigger hurdles, experts said.<\/p>\n
Until recently, Bangladesh had been a vaccination success story. The WHO and the United Nations children\u2019s agency UNICEF estimated that in 2024 it achieved 96 percent coverage \u2060for the first vaccine dose and 93 percent for the second, which is given to capture the small percentage of children who don\u2019t develop immunity after one shot.<\/p>\n
But that same \u200cyear, protests erupted that ended 15 years of rule by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In the ensuing political turmoil, health workers went on strike, vaccine orders \u200cwere delayed and follow-up vaccinations that usually accompany routine programs were disrupted.<\/p>\n
In a report published in July this year, WHO and UNICEF estimated first-dose coverage \u200bin 2025 had fallen to 90 percent, while second-dose coverage was 86 percent, several percentage points below the 95 percent needed for herd \u200cimmunity.<\/p>\n
The report also raised questions about the quality of official data on vaccinations for measles and other diseases for the years 2023 to 2025.<\/p>\n
It said preliminary figures sometimes showed numbers of those inoculated exceeded 100 percent of those targeted, \u200cindicating mistakes in counting doses or target numbers.<\/p>\n
EMERGENCY PROGRAMME MISSED MILLIONS<\/p>\n
Still, when the measles outbreak erupted, Bangladesh responded swiftly and initially seemed to be winning the battle.<\/p>\n
An emergency program was followed by an initial slowdown in new cases after almost 20 million children received a vaccination in April and May. The government said it had covered every child in the target age group of six months to five years.<\/p>\n
But in reality the program fell short. This emerged when another routine health intervention in June had a target list with 4 million more children than the measles campaign despite covering the same age group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a gap,\u201d prime ministerial adviser Hyder told Reuters on September 14, as measles cases rose again, blaming vaccine hesitancy by parents or child illnesses for keeping kids away.<\/p>\n
Other challenges have also \u200cemerged.<\/p>\n
Documents detailing meetings in April and August between the government, the WHO and other health partners, reviewed by Reuters and not previously reported, show how efforts to act fast may have led to shortcomings.<\/p>\n
Minutes from the April 19 meeting outlined how the government opted for just one round of so-called readiness checks before launching its \u2060emergency vaccination program due to time constraints, instead of the typical \u2060four rounds. Checks cover everything from ensuring fridges are available for keeping vaccines cool to determining how many children should be vaccinated.<\/p>\n
The single round of checks suggested most \u2014 but not all \u2014 districts were ready, according to the minutes.<\/p>\n
THE POOREST \u2018PAY THE PRICE\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen preparedness checks are not done properly, it is often the poorest and hardest-to-reach children who miss out on vaccination and pay the price,\u201d said Professor Mahmudur Rahman, an epidemiologist and chair of Bangladesh\u2019s National Verification Committee for Measles and Rubella Elimination.<\/p>\n
Hyder said the April campaign was launched in four weeks. Yet Tajul Islam Abdul Bari, who led immunization in Bangladesh until 2017, said campaigns usually demand months of planning.<\/p>\n
By the August meeting, shortcomings in the rollout were identified. Minutes noted the proportion of children with confirmed measles cases who had not been vaccinated was \u201cvirtually unchanged between pre-campaign (82 percent) and post-campaign (85 percent) … underscoring persistent coverage gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n
The WHO did not respond to questions about the April and August meetings. But deputy WHO representative to Bangladesh, Dr. Rajesh Narwal, said the WHO was determined to support the government in its goal of vaccinating every child at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoutine immunization must become more effective and resilient so that these gaps do not develop again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In Sylhet, where official records show 180 children have died, 8 of 16 families Reuters interviewed in September said they had not seen health workers offering vaccinations. At least six families said health workers visited only after a child had died from measles in their community.<\/p>\n
At the end of September, the government launched a new campaign to target 3.4 million children previously missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will involve people across villages so that no child is left behind,\u201d the health minister told a news conference.<\/p>\n
Yet reaching every child remains a challenge. UNICEF and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics say as many as 40 percent of children go unregistered, while government data showed around a third of health worker posts are unfilled.<\/p>\n
Health experts are also pushing the government to expand the program \u200bto vaccinate children over five. That age group represents a third of measles cases, the WHO says.<\/p>\n
In addition, \u200bscientists in Bangladesh are studying why immunity is waning faster than expected in babies up to six months or so. They are usually still protected by maternal antibodies, experts say.<\/p>\n
Ensuring prompt medical care is vital, the WHO says, another challenge for Bangladesh as it also fights a dengue epidemic.<\/p>\n
In September, every ward in Sylhet\u2019s 100-bed Shahid Shamsuddin Ahmed Hospital, which is treating measles, appeared overwhelmed. On the day Reuters visited, 178 patients were admitted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYLHET, Bangladesh: Bangladesh is battling to contain the world\u2019s worst measles outbreak, a crisis exacerbated by weak data,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11497,134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-633884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bangladesh","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633884","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=633884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}