Five additional suspected measles deaths raise Bangladesh’s toll to nearly 950 amid ongoing strain on hospitals and a decline in vaccination coverage, prompting fears of a deepening health crisis.
Five more children have died in Bangladesh’s measles outbreak, taking the combined death toll from confirmed and suspected cases to 943, according to the Directorate General of Health Services. The latest figures, reported on Tuesday, show that all five recent deaths were classed as suspected measles deaths, while no new confirmed fatalities were recorded in the previous 24 hours.
Health officials also logged 986 new suspected cases and 91 additional confirmed infections in the same period, lifting the totals to 151,638 suspected cases and 18,578 confirmed cases. Hospitals remain under heavy strain: the Dhaka Tribune and The Business Standard reported that 132,554 suspected measles patients have been admitted since March 15, with 127,811 discharged after recovery.
The World Health Organization has described Bangladesh’s 2026 outbreak as a high-risk national emergency, saying in April that children under five accounted for most reported cases and that the virus was spreading across multiple divisions. WHO said a targeted measles-rubella vaccination campaign began on April 5, alongside wider surveillance and outbreak-response measures.
A report by the Canada-based Global Centre for Democratic Governance argued that the crisis was not unforeseen from an epidemiological perspective. It linked the outbreak to missed routine immunisation, cancelled supplementary vaccination drives, procurement delays and a nationwide stock-out of measles-rubella vaccine in 2024 and 2025. The group said Bangladesh’s measles coverage fell to 56.2 per cent in 2025, the lowest level in the period it examined, leaving a large number of children vulnerable to a preventable disease.
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