More than 500 children have died in a measles outbreak sweeping Bangladesh, the country’s deadliest such surge in decades, Ada Derana and Al Jazeera reported.
Al Jazeera, citing health officials, put the toll at 512 as of Saturday (23), including 13 children who died in the preceding 24 hours. Most of the victims were aged between six months and five years.
Hospitals in the capital, Dhaka, have been overwhelmed by the influx and have set up dedicated measles wards, but they face a critical shortage of intensive-care beds. One paediatrician said most children were arriving with respiratory distress and infections of the eyes, throat and lungs.
Health experts have linked the outbreak to gaps in vaccination coverage that widened after the 2024 student-led uprising destabilised the government, leaving large numbers of children unprotected. Bangladesh’s high rates of childhood malnutrition have compounded the toll.
In response, authorities have launched a mass immunisation drive that the UN children’s agency UNICEF says has now reached 18 million children. Health officials cautioned that the full protective effect of the campaign would take months to materialise, while the government said the outbreak was being contained, with cases declining in some previously hard-hit areas.
The crisis in Bangladesh is a separate outbreak from the measles resurgence reported in Sri Lanka, and underscores the regional risk posed by lapses in routine childhood immunisation.
