Dhaka, Sept 9. (dpa/GNA) – More than 1,000 children have died, since a measles outbreak began in Bangladesh five months ago, with cases continuing to rise, the government’s health services department said on Wednesday.
The Directorate General of Health Services, reported that three children died after developing measles symptoms in the 24 hours, leading up to Wednesday morning.
During that same period, the directorate detected 69 confirmed measles cases, and identified 1,119 children with measles symptoms.
Some 1,034 measles patients were hospitalized during this time. The government’s health services control room says a total of 1,002 children have died since the outbreak began on March 15. Among them, 100 children were confirmed to have measles, while the rest died with symptoms, said Dr. Zahid Rayhan of the health directorate.
Measles is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable viral illness. It causes high fever, cough, red eyes, and a characteristic blotchy rash. Symptoms typically appear 10 to 12 days after exposure in children.
Since March 15, a total of 187,484 children in the country have shown measles symptoms. Of these, 19,904 were diagnosed with measles.
Some 147,393 children were admitted to hospitals, and of them 140,850 patients have since been discharged. In early April, the Bangladeshi government, with support from UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Vaccine Alliance Gavi, launched an emergency measles-rubella vaccination campaign.
UNICEF says the campaign aims to protect more than 1.2 million children aged six months to five years across 18 of the country’s 64 administrative districts.
Since April, the government has administered over 19.74 million vaccine doses nationwide, under its Expanded Programme on Immunization.
Despite the mass vaccination drive, deaths from measles and measles-like symptoms have continued. Experts fear that many children are not receiving the vaccine, and they question whether the government has a proper guideline in place to combat the outbreak.
“It was foreseeable that such a situation could occur, because the government launched the measles vaccination program based on old data,” said Mushtuq Husain, a public health expert, who previously served as an adviser at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Dhaka.
He added that the government should have collected door-to-door information through grassroots health workers, to determine the actual number of children in need of vaccination.
GNA