Emergency jabs after 100 children die of suspected measles in a month in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has launched an emergency vaccination campaign after a fast-spreading measles outbreak is suspected of killing more than 100 people, mostly children, in what may be the country’s most lethal wave of the disease in recent history.

The campaign, which began on Sunday, comes amid more than 7,500 suspected measles cases since 15 March, according to health ministry data.

More than 900 of these cases have been confirmed – a sharp increase from 2025, when just 125 measles cases were recorded over the entire year, local media report.

While Bangladesh has long vaccinated children against the highly contagious disease, the recent outbreak has exposed gaps in its programme, raising concern.

“Vaccines are foundational to child survival,” Rana Flowers, the Unicef representative in Bangladesh, said in a statement on Sunday, adding that the current measles outbreak was “putting thousands of children, especially the youngest and most vulnerable, at serious risk.”

In Bangladesh, a nation of 170 million people, routine measles vaccines are given to children as young as nine months old.

But Shahriar Sajjad, deputy director of the Health Department, told BBC Bangla that about one-third of those infected in the recent outbreak were under nine months old.

The infections of these young infants “who are not yet eligible for routine vaccination, are especially alarming”, said Flowers from Unicef.

On top of routine vaccinations, Bangladesh conducts special measles vaccination campaigns every four years.

But these campaigns haven’t gone according to plan.

There have been no special measles vaccination campaigns since 2020, first because of Covid then because of the “political situation”, Sajjad told BBC Bangla.

Bangladesh experienced political upheaval in 2024, when massive anti-government protests toppled its long-ruling leader Sheikh Hasina. An interim government took over after Hasina’s ousting, and only in February this year did the country elect a new government.

A measles vaccination campaign was supposed to be held in April this year, “but it did not happen”, Sajjad said.

A health official said procurement issues had led to a shortage of vaccines, including for measles, the Daily Star reported.

Many in Bangladesh have blamed the vaccine shortages on the former interim government, which oversaw a new vaccine procurement system.

But measles resurgences “are typically the result of these accumulated gaps rather than a single factor”, Unicef said in its statement.

“Bangladesh has a strong history of high immunisation coverage, but even small disruptions can lead to the gradual accumulation of immunity gaps over time.”

Along with international partners like Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO), Bangladesh has launched an emergency vaccination campaign for measles and rubella , a milder disease with similar symptoms to measles.

This campaign, which started on Sunday, will be rolled out across 30 upazilas – sub-districts in Bangladesh – and targets more than 1.2 million children between six months and five years old.

The campaign will prioritise “children who have missed routine immunisation and are most vulnerable to severe illness and complications”, according to Unicef.

There will also be a particular focus on Dhaka, the densely populated capital, and Cox’s Bazar, home to crowded Rohingya refugee camps, Unicef said.

Besides the vaccination drive, health authorities are also publishing infographics that teach people how to identify and prevent measles. (BBC News)

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