Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi
New Delhi, Sep 15: Bangladesh is grappling with a severe measles outbreak that has claimed more than 1,000 lives since mid-March, exposing significant immunity gaps following years of declining routine vaccination coverage and disruptions to immunisation services, according to a new report.
The report by Al Jazeera, citing Bangladesh Health Ministry data, said 1,009 deaths had been recorded by September 9\. Of these, 100 were laboratory-confirmed measles deaths, while 909 were classified as suspected measles fatalities.
Authorities said 19.75 million children have been vaccinated under an emergency campaign launched in April. The campaign initially targeted around 18 million children aged six months to under five years.
However, public health experts said the original estimate of children requiring vaccination was too low. They also warned that national vaccination coverage figures can mask pockets where large numbers of children remain susceptible to measles.
Bangladesh's 2023 Coverage Evaluation Survey found that first-dose measles-rubella vaccination coverage declined to 86 per cent in 2023 from 88.6 per cent in 2019\. Second-dose coverage dropped to 80.7 per cent from 89 per cent during the same period.
Measles transmission generally requires vaccination coverage of around 95 per cent to be interrupted.
"Coverage therefore remained below the approximately 95 percent level needed to interrupt measles transmission, allowing the number of susceptible children to grow over successive years," the report noted.
Before 2026, Bangladesh had not conducted a nationwide supplementary measles-rubella vaccination campaign since the previous campaign held between December 2020 and January 2021.
Routine immunisation services were also disrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic. UNICEF has cited misinformation and vaccine hesitancy among factors contributing to children missing their vaccinations.
Mushtuq Hussain, a former principal scientific officer at Bangladesh's Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), said political changes in the country resulted in delays in vaccine procurement, along with vaccine shortages in 2024 and 2025.
"Cases began rising markedly in January 2026 and surged through March, prompting Bangladesh to notify the World Health Organization (WHO) of a nationwide outbreak on April 4," the report said.
By mid-April, measles cases had been reported in 58 of Bangladesh's 64 districts, highlighting the widespread nature of the outbreak.