Bangladesh battles world's worst measles outbreak as 1,147 die, mostly children
Bangladesh has recorded 202000 suspected measles cases and 1147 deaths in the world's worst outbreak this year, a Reuters review of WHO data shows.
Bangladesh is battling the world’s worst measles outbreak, with 202,000 suspected cases and 1,147 deaths since mid-March, the World Health Organization has said — a crisis experts say is a warning to every country about falling immunisation rates.
Reuters, citing WHO figures up to October 9, reports that 22,000 of the cases were laboratory-confirmed, more suspected cases than any other country this year. Ninety-four percent of the reported deaths were among children under five.
Until recently Bangladesh was a vaccination success story: the WHO and UNICEF estimated 96 percent first-dose and 93 percent second-dose coverage in 2024. But after the 2024 protests that ended 15 years of rule by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, health workers went on strike, vaccine orders were delayed and routine follow-ups were disrupted. WHO and UNICEF estimated first-dose coverage fell to 90 percent and second-dose to 86 percent in 2025 — several points below the 95 percent needed for herd immunity.
A Reuters review of WHO documents and interviews with more than a dozen scientists, health workers and officials found the emergency response was hampered by data that left out millions of children. An April–May emergency campaign vaccinated almost 20 million children aged six months to five years, but a June health intervention targeting the same age group listed four million more children than the measles campaign. Minutes of an April 19 meeting show the government ran just one round of readiness checks instead of the typical four before launching the emergency programme.
The proportion of confirmed measles cases among unvaccinated children was “virtually unchanged” between pre-campaign (82 percent) and post-campaign (85 percent), the documents showed. In May, Health Minister Sardar Md. Sakhawat Husain said the emergency drive had brought hotspot cases “almost to zero” and the outbreak was under control — yet in September Bangladesh averaged 1,198 new cases a day, the highest total since May.
At the end of September the government launched a new campaign targeting 3.4 million previously missed children. UNICEF and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics say as many as 40 percent of children are unregistered, while about a third of health worker posts are unfilled. Experts are also urging the programme to cover children over five, who account for a third of cases.
“This is a real warning to every country,” said Mark Jit, a WHO vaccine adviser and professor at the NYU School of Global Public Health. “Preventing an outbreak through vaccinations was easier, cheaper and safer than responding to an emergency.”
In the worst-hit Sylhet region, official records show 180 children have died. Measles usually kills two or three people in every 1,000 cases, the WHO says, but can be more deadly in poorer nations because of factors such as malnutrition.
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