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Update on the Measles Outbreak in Bangladesh

By / / Bangladesh, Donald Trump, funding cuts, measles deaths, measles outbreaks, SIA, supplemental immunization activities, USAID, vaccination drive

The measles outbreak in Bangladesh is tragic in many ways.

In addition to the growing numbers of kids dying with measles, it is the simple fact that the outbreak (is it an epidemic yet?) was caused by an inept government.

Update on the Measles Outbreak in Bangladesh

A measles outbreak in Bangladesh that has grown into one of the most deadly in recent years.

In just the past month, there have been:

  • over 50,000 measles cases
  • over 350 deaths

And this is in a country that had gotten measles cases under pretty good control once they started expanding their immunization programs about twenty years ago.

So what happened?

Measles control in Bangladesh was dependent on a regular schedule for supplemental immunization activities (SIA). When they stopped, measles returned.

In addition to vaccinating kids at 9 and 15 months, in Bangladesh, they held special measles vaccination drives (supplemental immunization activities) every four years to catch up anyone who had been missed.

“National measles-rubella catch-up SIA targeted children aged 9 mos–14 yrs, conducted during Jan 25–Feb 13, 2014 targeting 51,745,231 children.”

Progress Toward Measles Elimination — Bangladesh, 2000–2016

And that worked to get measles under control in Bangladesh!

Unfortunately, the last large-scale nationwide measles SIA was in 2014.

While they had planned to get back on track in 2020, that campaign didn’t happen because of the COVID pandemic.

That left Bangladesh primed for measles outbreaks, with a lot of unvaccinated children and adults.

And then, government health reforms instituted in 2024 made things much worse, leading to a shortage of measles vaccines and workers in Bangladesh to help control their outbreak.

“Different organisations in Bangladesh held demonstrations demanding trial of former chief adviser Muhammad Yunus for the deaths of several hundreds of children from measles, local media reported.”

Protesters demand trial of Yunus over measles deaths of children in Bangladesh

What else?

“The analysis found that 97% of Bangladesh’s bilateral U.S. funding had been nixed, dropping from nearly $80 million in 2024 to just $2 million in 2025, and making it the country with the largest percentage of its program cut.”

One Year Post-USAID, Global Health Funding Stuck in Limbo 

Funding cuts from the administration of Donald Trump has also made the measles epidemic in Bangladesh harder to control.

“A nationwide measles-rubella (MR) vaccination campaign was approved by the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) on 30 March 2026, targeting children aged 6–59 months (with expanded coverage for 6–8 months), and started on 5 April in 30 upazilas (sub-districts) of 18 priority districts. A nationwide campaign commenced on 20 April.”

Measles – Bangladesh

That’s likely why their recent emergency vaccination campaign only targeted about 35% of the number of children that they usually do. A low number considering that they also had a lot of catching up to, with no supplemental immunization campaigns in over 10 years!

So while it is great that more kids are getting vaccinated and protected, we might not expect to see the measles outbreak in Bangladesh to end that quickly.

If it doesn’t, this measles outbreak could easily grow as large as recent measles outbreaks in the Philippines (over 675 deaths in 2018) or Madagascar (over 1,200 deaths in 2019).

More on the Bangladesh Measles Outbreak

Last Updated on May 12, 2026

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