Bangladesh was on target to eliminate measles. Now the disease is killing hundreds of children

While deadly Hantovirus and Ebola outbreaks have dominated the headlines in recent months, Bangladesh is fighting its own battle against an infectious disease — and children are at the centre of it. 

The South Asian country — once hailed as a success story in the fight to eliminate measles —  is now scrambling to contain its worst outbreak in decades. 

Bangladesh’s health ministry has identified more than 60,000 suspected measles cases nationwide, and says more than 500 children have died from confirmed or suspected cases. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” Emmanuelle Abrioux, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Bangladesh, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “We know measles is preventable, and I think that makes it all the more devastating.”

‘A perfect storm’

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, spreading through droplets from the nose, mouth or throat of infected persons. It can largely be prevented through two doses of vaccine, yet remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally. 

Children under five are most vulnerable to severe infection and death, particularly those who have not been vaccinated or have only been partially immunized.

At least 86 children have died from confirmed measles infections in Bangladesh this year, and another 426 with symptoms consistent with the disease, according to the country’s Directorate General of Health Services.

UNICEF says it’s been unable to confirm the government’s estimates, but suspects the death toll of children from measles is in the hundreds. 

Abrioux has been visiting hospitals and immunization centres across the country and says parents are expressing “a mix of emotions.”

“The first thing that’s coming out very clearly in my conversations with parents is the sense of fear,” she said. “But also a feeling of guilt in relation to why they may have missed the routine immunization.”

UNICEF and the World Health Organization blame the surge of cases on a drop in vaccine uptake in recent years. 

While some of that comes down to vaccine hesitancy, Abrioux says, a lot of it stems from “a perfect storm” of factors beyond most people’s control.

Just a few years ago, Bangladesh was on track to meet its goal of eliminating the disease by its target goal of 2026. Thanks to a robust vaccination program carried out in collaboration with WHO, the country raised its childhood immunization rate from two per cent in 1979 to 81.6 per cent by 2025, according to UNICEF.

But it doesn’t take long to unravel decades of progress. 

Political upheaval

Political upheaval in in 2023 and 2024 caused some children to miss their scheduled shots, Abrioux said. Then, when Bangladesh’s authoritarian government fell in 2024, a complex transition period disrupted immunization further.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government has blamed the previous interim government, which handed over power earlier this year. 

In 2025, the interim government stopped procuring vaccines through UNICEF, as it had done for years, and switched to an open tender system, inviting potential suppliers to bid for contracts. 

UNICEF strongly warned against the move, which led to vaccine supply-chain issues.

One family told BBC News that their four-year-old daughter died from measles after they tried twice to get her immunized, only to be turned away because there was no vaccine available. 

The current government has reversed the public tender policy, and Bangladesh is again sourcing vaccines through UNICEF.

Abrioux says the country’s health-care system wasn’t ready for the sudden onslaught. 

In the earliest days of the outbreak, Abrioux says she visited hospitals where she saw multiple children per bed, some with measles and some without. 

She described meeting health-care workers who wanted to help, but were “struggling sometimes to know what to do, or struggling because they know they don’t have the resources.”

“[I’ve had] health workers tell me that they’ve had to turn away parents with sick children because they simply can’t accommodate them,” she said. 

Massive immunization campaign underway

To respond to the growing crisis, Bangladesh’s government has partnered UNICEF, WHO and the Gavi Vaccine Alliance to launch a massive child vaccination campaign, which began in April. 

The goal is to reach more than 17.8 million children between the ages of six months and five years, and achieve at least 95 per cent coverage.

The government says it has also deployed rapid response teams, strengthened disease surveillance and increased the distribution of vitamin A to reduce complications from undernutrition. 

The campaign began by targeting 18 high-risk districts, and Abrioux says they’re already seeing evidence of transmission slowing in those areas.

“But across the country as a whole, it’s still too early to start to see those rates coming down,” she said. “Progress is there, but it is slow.”