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Bangladesh's Measles Catastrophe Crosses Grim 1,000-Death Milestone
The world's worst current measles outbreak has now killed more than 1,000 children since March, as health officials admit an emergency vaccination drive left millions of kids unprotected.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Measles has killed more than 1,000 children in Bangladesh since the outbreak began in March, making it the world's deadliest active measles crisis and a stark illustration of how quickly a preventable disease can spiral when vaccination coverage slips.
The country's Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) put the suspected and confirmed death toll at 999 as of Tuesday, according to NBC News, before crossing the 1,000 threshold in the days since. Al Jazeera reports 187,484 total infections have been recorded nationwide since the outbreak began.
A Vaccination Drive That Fell Short
Health authorities launched an emergency nationwide vaccination campaign in April that reached roughly 18 million children — but officials estimate as many as 4 million children were never reached, leaving critical gaps in the population's immunity.
"WE COULDN'T ACHIEVE HERD IMMUNITY."
"We couldn't achieve herd immunity," DGHS spokesman Zahid Raihan told AFP, saying teams are still actively searching for children who missed doses. The World Health Organization and UNICEF estimate that only 86% of Bangladeshi children received their second measles dose in 2025, down sharply from 93% the year before — a decline officials attribute to disruption of routine immunization programs during the political turmoil that followed the 2024 ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The scale of the reversal is stark: Bangladesh recorded just 100 to 300 measles cases annually between 2021 and 2025, itself a decline from 2,410 cases in 2020, according to Al Jazeera. This year's outbreak represents more than a sixtyfold increase over that baseline.
CBC News reports the crisis has strained rural hospitals in particular, where families often face long travel times to reach treatment once a child develops complications like pneumonia or encephalitis, the leading causes of measles death in unvaccinated children.
International health officials say closing the immunization gap will require renewed door-to-door outreach in the hardest-hit districts, along with rebuilding public trust in routine childhood vaccination after a period of institutional upheaval. For now, the outbreak shows no clear sign of peaking, and officials have not set a timeline for when case counts might begin to decline.