[Source: Reuters]

Bangladesh is battling to contain the world’s worst measles outbreak.

A crisis exacerbated by weak data, inadequate outreach and vaccination gaps that experts say offers a warning to other nations about the deadly risk of falling immunisation rates.

Bangladesh, whose routine vaccination programme faltered in 2025, reported 202,000 suspected measles cases – 22,000 of them laboratory-confirmed – since the start of the outbreak in mid-March to October 9, the World Health Organization said. That’s more suspected cases than any other country this year.

So far, 1,147 people have died of the highly contagious disease, with 94% of reported deaths among children under five years old, the WHO said.

Bangladesh’s experience shows the challenge of containing an outbreak when vaccination coverage falls below 95%, a level the WHO says is needed to prevent outbreaks. Bangladesh almost achieved that in recent years but in 2025 coverage dropped.

A Reuters review of WHO documents, alongside interviews with more than a dozen scientists, health workers and officials, shows Bangladesh was also hampered in its emergency response by data that left out millions of children, shortcomings in preparation and a failure to reach enough parents.

“This is a real warning to every country,” said Mark Jit, a WHO vaccine adviser and professor at the School of Global Public Health at New York University.

Preventing an outbreak through vaccinations was easier, cheaper and safer than responding to an emergency, he said.

“The response will stop the outbreak eventually, but in the meantime, many will have had measles, and some will have died,” he said.

Ziauddin Hyder, special assistant on health affairs to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, told Reuters in September the government was doing everything it could to end the outbreak.

The government did not respond to further questions sent in October for this article.