In May, we posted a story about the rapid and devastating spread of measles in Bangladesh. The headline: More than 500 children have died in an outbreak that the world is virtually ignoring. We asked the reporter who covered the story to tell us what has transpired since then.
Over the next week, we'll be looking back at some of our past global health and development stories to see "whatever happened to ..." There was optimism early on about bringing the measles outbreak in Bangladesh under control. In April, the country's health minister, Sardar Md. Sakhawat Husain, offered this assessment: "Measles outbreak has somewhat decreased in the country.
Once the nationwide vaccination campaign begins on April 20, the situation will improve further." The goal was to vaccinate 18 million children ages 6 months to 5 years, even if records indicated they'd already been vaccinated. That goal was met and then some, with 18.4 million vaccinations. Five months later, the outbreak continues apace.
In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Bangladesh has had more measles cases than any other country from January to June of this year: 57,561. On the day of Aug. 31, authorities recorded 1,162 suspected cases and 94 confirmed cases in 24 hours. On September 9, the toll for children who have died from suspected or confirmed measles cases since March 15 passed 1,000, according to the Directorate General of Health Services of Bangladesh.
It turns out that 18 million vaccinations wasn't enough to reach all the unvaccinated children. Health experts in the country now say that 22.6 million is the true target. This persistent immunization gap has given the highly contagious virus a continued chance to spread.
"Many children have still not received the measles vaccine, so we cannot go into a relaxed mode," Tajul Abdul Bari told NPR. He is a vaccine expert and former program manager of the government's Expanded Programme on Immunization. "We need to start a new vaccination campaign, potentially covering children from 6 months up to under 10 years of age.
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