Five-year-old Omar lay critically ill at Dhaka Medical College Hospital while his father, Kamrul Hasan, sat anxiously beside the bed.
The child was first admitted to the hospital’s paediatric ward with diarrhoea. Although the condition improved after three days, he later developed a fever, rashes and breathing complications. Doctors then transferred him to the measles ward.
“We did not vaccinate Omar. We thought measles was a common illness and that vaccination was unnecessary,” his father told TIMES of Bangladesh.
The scene is becoming increasingly common in hospitals treating children infected with measles, as doctors and public health experts say many babies admitted with measles and related complications were not vaccinated.
TIMES of Bangladesh spoke to guardians of 33 children admitted to the two hospitals in Dhaka. Among them, 16 said their children had received measles vaccines. Six of those children had also received additional doses during the ongoing special immunisation campaign.
However, 17 guardians said their children had not received any measles vaccine.
The situation has become increasingly alarming as the number of deaths linked to measles and related complications reaching 451 on Friday.
According to the Directorate General of Health Services, 12 more deaths were reported in the 24 hours until 8am on Friday.
At the measles ward of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, several admitted children had not received measles vaccines. Some parents, like Omar’s father, underestimated the seriousness of the disease. Others said they had been influenced by anti-vaccine propaganda circulating online, while some cited overcrowding or other complications that prevented them from vaccinating their children.
Similar accounts emerged at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Dhaka.
Fact-checking organisation Dismislab said in a recent report that anti-vaccine posts have continued to spread on Facebook even as the government intensified measles vaccination efforts following the recent outbreak.
The report said some posts promoted so-called alternative methods instead of vaccination, including religious remedies, Ayurvedic treatments and even rubbing saliva on the body.
According to Dismislab, at least 78 anti-vaccine Facebook posts were shared between 30 March and 1 April.
The organisation said the posts largely followed three recurring narratives and were often reposted from multiple accounts to widen their reach.
Some posts falsely claimed that vaccination programmes were part of a “satanic agenda” and alleged that vaccines were being used to conduct medical experiments.
Nineteen-year-old Mim Akter arrived at Dhaka Medical College Hospital from Nazimuddin Road in Old Dhaka with her three-year-and-five-month-old son, Sohan, on 5 May.
Mim said Sohan had received a measles vaccine when he was nine months old, but he was not given an additional dose during the recent vaccination campaign.
“He had already been vaccinated. I heard an extra dose could make children sick, so I was afraid to give it,” she said.
At the same hospital, a mother who brought her 11-year-old child from Noakhali said her child had never received a measles vaccine because she simply did not know vaccination was necessary.
Even some healthcare workers expressed doubts about the vaccine.
A nurse at Dhaka Medical College Hospital said she had not vaccinated her own two children against measles.
Asked why, she said, “If even I, as a nurse, feel this is not providing protection, then why would ordinary people trust it?”
Doctors working in the hospital’s paediatric unit said they were seeing a mixed picture among infected children.
“Some of the affected children received both routine vaccinations and campaign doses, while many others did not receive any vaccine at all,” physician Tanzila Haque told TIMES.
For others, the problem was not distrust but access.
Roksana Begum, a garment worker from Gazipur, said she still had not been able to vaccinate her four-year-old son, Mostakim, against measles.
“I went to a campaign centre on a holiday to get him vaccinated. But the crowd was so large that by the time my turn came it was after 4pm,” she said.
“They told me no more vaccines would be given that day and asked me to return the next day. But I had work, so I could not go back.”
Measles death toll crosses 450
The worsening conditions in hospitals reflect the rapid spread of measles across Bangladesh over the past two months.
According to data from DGHS, a total of 451 people died from measles and measles-like symptoms between 15 March and 15 May.
Among them, 74 deaths were laboratory-confirmed measles cases, while the remaining 377 patients died with suspected measles symptoms.
The health authorities said the number of suspected measles cases nationwide has risen to 55,611 since 15 March.
Of those, 7,416 cases were confirmed through laboratory testing.
In the latest 24-hour reporting period, 1,192 new suspected cases were identified and 111 more infections were confirmed.
During the same period, 1,016 new patients were admitted to hospitals across the country, while 1,087 patients were discharged after recovery.
