Kathmandu. More than 500 children have died in a measles epidemic in Bangladesh. It has become the deadliest outbreak in decades. The death toll continued to rise on Saturday. According to the Department of Health, 13 children have died in the last 24 hours. The total number of deaths has risen to 512 since March 15.
Hospitals in the capital Dhaka are now overwhelmed with patients. Although a special ward has been set up there, there are not enough intensive care unit (ICU) beds. Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that spreads through coughs and sneezes. Once infected, there is no specific treatment.
The disease is most common in children and can cause serious complications, such as pneumonia, brain swelling, and death, especially in malnourished or unvaccinated children.
Measles is one of the leading causes of preventable child mortality worldwide.
Bangladesh, a South Asian country with a population of 175 million, has launched a massive vaccination campaign to control the pandemic. Rana Flowers, the Bangladesh chief of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said the campaign had reached 18 million children this week.
But the health department has said it will take a few more months for the full impact of the vaccination campaign to be seen.
In a statement on Wednesday, UNICEF said the 2024 student-led protests and subsequent chaos had affected the vaccination programme. The movement overthrew the government and subsequently a large number of children were deprived of vaccinations.
The health department claims that the number of cases has decreased in some of the worst-hit areas and that the epidemic has been brought under control, but the number of deaths is still rising.
Most of the infected people in the current epidemic are children between the ages of six months and five years.
According to doctors, most of the children who reached the hospital were in critical condition.
Ainul Islam Khan, a pediatrician at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital in Dhaka, told AFP that measles is highly contagious but a healthy child can be cured with normal medicines. But most of the children were suffering from respiratory problems, eye, throat and lung infections. ’
UNICEF stressed the need to make future immunization programmes more effective, increase investment in health institutions, and strengthen surveillance and data systems.
A policy report by the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership published on Thursday warned that a shortage of vaccines could further exacerbate antimicrobial resistance in Bangladesh.
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