{"id":661161,"date":"2026-05-23T21:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T21:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/661161\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T21:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T21:39:10","slug":"suspected-and-confirmed-measles-deaths-top-500-in-bangladesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/661161\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspected and confirmed measles deaths top 500 in Bangladesh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">DHAKA, May 23 (Reuters) &#8211; At least 86 children have died from confirmed measles infections in \u200cBangladesh this year, and another 426 with \u200csymptoms consistent with the disease, health officials said on Saturday, as the \u200bcountry battles one of its worst outbreaks in decades.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cases have spread rapidly in recent months, overwhelming hospitals and placing severe strain on already fragile healthcare services, \u200cparticularly in rural districts \u2060and densely populated low-income urban areas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Health authorities have identified 62,507 suspected measles cases \u2060nationwide as well as 8,494 laboratory-confirmed infections between March 15 and May 23, data from the Directorate \u200bGeneral of \u200bHealth Services showed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Children under \u200bfive are most vulnerable \u200cto severe infection and death, particularly those who have not been vaccinated or have only been partially immunized, health officials have said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The World Health Organization said last month declining routine immunisation coverage had increased \u200cthe risk of a large-scale \u200boutbreak.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Since then, the government has \u200bexpanded emergency measles-rubella vaccination \u200bcampaigns targeting young children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The government says \u200cit has also deployed rapid \u200bresponse teams, \u200bstrengthened disease surveillance and increased the distribution of vitamin A to reduce complications.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Measles is one of \u200bthe world\u2019s most \u200ccontagious diseases but can largely be prevented \u200bthrough two doses of vaccine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">(Reporting by Ruma Paul, \u200bEditing by Andrew Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DHAKA, May 23 (Reuters) &#8211; At least 86 children have died from confirmed measles infections in \u200cBangladesh this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[18819,97,9572],"class_list":["post-661161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bangladesh","tag-health","tag-measles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}