By Priyajit Debsarkar

More than 500 children have been killed in Bangladesh in a recent outbreak of measles in the country, and most of the unfortunate, innocent victims are aged between six months and five years. Hospitals in the city of Dhaka have now been completely overwhelmed with new cases, which have seen a significant spike and have not encountered such an outbreak in the last three decades.

Measles is a type of disease that, once identified, has no specific treatment and is also extremely contagious, viral in nature, which spreads through coughs and sneezes, very much similar to the recent memories of the planetary pandemic of COVID-19. Once infected primarily in children, they can develop several complications, including pneumonia and brain inflammation, resulting in deaths.

Malnourished and unvaccinated children are predominantly the first line of attack for this virus however if a systemic vaccine campaign had been ongoing this potentially deadly virus could have been nipped in the bud. UNICEF had already flagged up that the gaps in the immunisation programme that had deteriorated sharply since August 2024 to the present date could be one of the potential key factors in this rapid outbreak affecting hundreds, and potentially has no end in sight. It is not only the fatalities but also the trauma and long-term damage that will remain with the survivors and will definitely have a legacy bearing on future generations.

Bangladesh had made significant strides and progress in the past in its efforts to vaccinate newborns and had made global headlines in delivering higher rates of survival for young children and mothers, especially in Southeast Asia. However, since the monsoon revolution of 2024, there have been constructive nationwide vaccine shortages, which have resulted in a plummeting of the immunization rates. Thus, the virus has made a dramatic resurgence, coupled with child malnutrition and general economic downturn due to global geopolitical scenarios. Traditionally, Bangladesh used to administer two doses of the measles rubella vaccine to children at nine months and then fifteen months of age, and another supplementary booster dose when they were four years.

The previous governments must be given credit, as they reached as high as 95% coverage in order to meet the threshold for the prevention of outbreaks. UNICEF supplied the vaccines to Bangladesh funded by the GAVI vaccine alliance, and local governments contributed as well. The Interim government led by Economist and Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, also popularly known as the banker of the poor, took a divergence from the standard policy. In September 2025, Yunus’s government halted vaccine procurement through UNICEF and moved to an open tender system—a procurement process in which the government invites suppliers to bid and evaluates proposals before placing orders.

The tender process to secure a fresh batch of vaccines got intertwined in a major bureaucratic process, and delays in conjunction with the student revolution led advisory bodies, which resulted in a total evaporation of existing stocks. With no fresh supplies coming in, the immunization campaign hit a dangerous deadlock. The campaign to vaccinate the young was put on hold in 2024 and then later postponed to the next year, which was further cancelled.

According to government figures, last year in 2025, only a mere 59% of eligible children were given the vaccine, and later this data was removed from the government websites. Writing was on the wall as a dip in the ongoing vaccination process would be directly proportional to the resurgence of the virus. In its path lay the innocent lives, the future of hundreds and potentially thousands of children and their desperate families. 

As a terrible tragedy unfolds before the world, the present leadership and the government in Bangladesh, which took office a few months ago, must take immediate cognizance of this matter and ensure that wartime readiness is enforced before any single innocent life is lost. They must also explore the options to identify the critical missed opportunities in the procurement process, which has led to such an unequivocal man-made disaster. The present administration must bring to book those who were in position for the last eighteen months and could have directly or indirectly played a major pivotal role in architecting such a constructive catastrophe. 

Author – Priyajit Debsarkar, http://www.priyajit.co.uk

Views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication, The Indo-Pacific Politics.