A woman takes care of her child while getting treatment for measles during an outbreak at a hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. (AP photo)
Thousands of children have been sickened by a measles outbreak that’s sweeping across Bangladesh and has killed hundreds of children following setbacks to the country’s vaccine program.
Bangladesh has been racing to halt the outbreak’s spread since March, when more than 100 children died in less than a month. By Sept. 8, the death toll from suspected measles cases reached 999 since the start of the year, according to the government’s Directorate General of Health Services.
Since March, the country has recorded more than 166,000 suspected measles cases, including 19,835 laboratory-confirmed infections, according to the Ministry of Health.
A few years ago, Bangladesh had measles largely under control, with a vaccination program that was credited for decades for protecting children and mothers from the deadly diseases of tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, poliomyelitis and measles. Between 2021 and 2025, the country recorded just 100 to 300 cases per year, down from 2,410 cases in 2020.
But in the last few years, disruptions to the vaccine program have left a growing number of children unvaccinated.
First the pandemic interrupted routine vaccinations, and then in 2024 the government largely missed a vaccination campaign previously carried out every four years.
Measles is a highly contagious airborne disease that causes fever, respiratory symptoms and a characteristic rash. It can sometimes have severe or fatal complications, especially in young children.
