Govt to roll out another 16 lakh measles-rubella vaccine doses

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken an initiative to bring all children in areas of Bangladesh who have yet to receive measles-rubella vaccines under the vaccination programme.

It has also decided to train doctors on the use of measles treatment guidelines to ensure their wider application.

The decisions were taken at a meeting of the Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee (ICC) on immunisation held at the health ministry on Sunday last. Health Secretary Md Kamruzzaman Chowdhury chaired the meeting.

The health secretary said the ICC held an important meeting on the country’s measles situation, with almost all relevant stakeholders attending and discussing the current outbreak.

“Some important decisions have been taken. In some areas of the country, not all children aged between six months and five years have yet been vaccinated. These children will be brought under the vaccination programme,” he said, adding that the government currently has another 16 lakh doses of vaccine in stock.

The ICC meeting also presented data on the ages of measles patients. It showed that 10% of those affected were under six months old, while 74% were aged between six and 59 months. Another 14% were aged five to 10 years, with the remaining 2% aged 10 to 14 or above.

Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a press release on Monday that 19,363,912 children aged between six months and five years had received a single dose of measles vaccine between 5 April and 17 August.

The DGHS also reported seven more deaths among people with measles symptoms in the past 24 hours, taking the number of deaths from suspected measles cases this year to 815.

In addition, 99 people have died from laboratory-confirmed measles, bringing the total number of measles-related deaths this year to 914.

Most of those who died were under five years old, and many of them had not received any measles vaccination.

The health ministry said children who had been missed by the vaccination programme would be identified quickly and vaccinated, while doctors would receive training to improve the effectiveness of measles case management.