New Delhi: Bangladesh is grappling with a severe measles outbreak that has killed over 1,000 people since mid‑March, exposing immunity gaps after years of declining routine vaccination coverage and disruptions to immunisation services, a new report has said.
The report from Al Jazeera cited health ministry data showing 1,009 deaths by September 9, including 100 laboratory‑confirmed measles fatalities and 909 classified as suspected measles deaths.
Authorities said 19.75 million children have been vaccinated in an emergency campaign that began in April, against an initial target of about 18 million children aged six months to under five years.
However, public health experts said that the original estimate of the children needing vaccines was too low.
Further, the national coverage figures can obscure pockets where large numbers of susceptible children remain, they said.
Bangladesh’s 2023 Coverage Evaluation Survey found first‑dose measles‑rubella coverage dropped to 86 per cent in 2023 from 88.6 per cent in 2019, while second‑dose coverage fell to 80.7 per cent from 89 per cent over the same period. Measles transmission typically requires roughly 95 per cent coverage to be interrupted.
Before 2026, Bangladesh had not conducted a nationwide supplementary measles-rubella campaign since the last one ran from December 2020 to January 2021.
“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.
Routine immunisation was disrupted during the COVID‑19 pandemic, and UNICEF has also cited misinformation and vaccine hesitancy among factors preventing children from receiving vaccinations.
Mushtuq Hussain, a former principal scientific officer at Bangladesh’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) said that regime change in the country caused delays in vaccine procurement, and 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, adding that cases had been reported in 58 of the country’s 64 districts by mid-April.
