Measles Crisis Leaves Bangladesh Families Paying

Amin Mia said health workers reached his remote village only after his two-year-old son, Arman Hossain, died of suspected measles in July. His family sold its three-wheeled auto rickshaw to pay for the boy’s hospital treatment.

Bangladesh reported 202,000 suspected measles cases from mid-March through October 9, including 22,000 laboratory-confirmed cases, the World Health Organisation said. The WHO reported 1,147 deaths, 94 per cent among children under five. No other country reported as many suspected cases that year.

“They came only after I buried my son,” Mia, 26, told Reuters. His four-year-old daughter survived. She wasn’t vaccinated.

Families Bear the Cost

In Chhatak, also in the northeastern Sylhet region, nine-month-old Labiba Akter died unvaccinated in June. Her father, Humayun Rashid, a 30-year-old carpenter, said she could have received a vaccination in April, when an emergency programme lowered the vaccination age from nine months to six. “No health worker came to tell us,” he said.

Sylhet was one of Bangladesh’s worst-hit areas. The nation has 178 million people. The WHO says measles usually kills two or three people in every 1,000 cases, but the disease can prove deadlier in poorer nations because of factors including malnutrition.

The outbreak also filled hospital wards with children and their parents. Masum, 8, received treatment in the overcrowded measles isolation ward at Shahid Shamsuddin Ahmed Hospital in Sylhet on September 12, 2026. Mohammad Nasir Ali, 40, was photographed stroking the forehead of his seven-year-old son, Adil Ahmed, who entered the same ward that day. Bilkis and other parents cared for children receiving treatment there.

In Narayanganj on May 11, 2026, Urmi, 19, mourned as her 11-month-old son, Mohammad, deteriorated in a hospital neonatal intensive care unit. On September 15, 2026, photographers captured Amin Mia and Sajina Begum, 27, with their four-year-old daughter Fatima after suspected measles killed their 34-month-old son, Arman Hossain, during the outbreak.

Vaccination Gaps and State Response

A WHO and UNICEF report published in July estimated Bangladesh’s first-dose coverage at 90 per cent in 2025 and second-dose coverage at 86 per cent. The WHO says coverage must reach 95 per cent to prevent outbreaks. Bangladesh had nearly reached that level in recent years, but its routine vaccination programme faltered in 2025.

The report also questioned official vaccination data for measles and other diseases from 2023 to 2025. Preliminary figures sometimes showed more people vaccinated than the number targeted, suggesting errors in dose counts or target figures. Reuters reviewed WHO documents and interviewed more than a dozen scientists, health workers and officials. That review found emergency preparations hampered by data that left out millions of children, preparation shortcomings and failures to reach enough parents.

Ziauddin Hyder, special assistant on health affairs to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, told Reuters in September that the government was doing everything it could to end the outbreak. The government didn’t respond to further questions sent in October.

Emergency Measures, Delayed Protection

The emergency programme lowered the vaccination age in April, but Rashid said no health worker told his family that his daughter could receive an inoculation. In Arman’s village, Mia said health workers arrived after his son had died.

Mark Jit, a WHO vaccine adviser and professor at the School of Global Public Health at New York University, called the outbreak “a real warning to every country.” Preventing an outbreak through vaccination was easier, cheaper and safer than responding to an emergency, he said. “The response will stop the outbreak eventually, but in the meantime, many will have had measles, and some will have died.”