May 11, 2026 Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, Prothom Alo, reported this week about a concerning decline in child health following decades of improvement, specifically regarding nutrition and measles. Health professionals have long recognized the insidious risks for children who are both malnourished and infected with measles; specifically, measles infection is significantly more fatal in children suffering from malnutrition.
According to reports from Prothom Alo, published from Dhaka, Bangladesh has recorded 19,161 suspected measles cases and 2,973 laboratory-confirmed cases across 58 of its 64 districts, resulting in 166 suspected deaths. Three-quarters of these cases involved children under five years of age. Furthermore, two-thirds of the infected children had received no measles vaccine at all—a major failure in public health coverage. see: https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/pr0qimrtyr
Health experts warn that fatalities will likely continue to climb for several more weeks. The Lancet corroborates this trend, noting that the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Dhaka admitted 560 suspected measles cases in the first three months of 2026, compared to just 69 cases in all of 2025. (The Lancet)
In this reporting, Prothom Alo correctly identifies malnutrition, Vitamin A deficiency, declining breastfeeding rates, and missed deworming as compounding or co-risk factors of disease and death, as supported by medical literature. While Bangladesh’s child health had improved over many decades, and achieved over 92% first-dose measles vaccine coverage by the mid-2010s, the program has become weak, irregular, and delayed in recent years. For instance, the measles vaccination drive scheduled for June 2024 was delayed by the deadly public protests that toppled then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
In the long run, chronic malnutrition—measured by stunting (low height-for-age)—has improved, falling from roughly 50% in 2000 to around 24% by 2022, representing a major achievement. Wasting (low weight-for-height) similarly declined from 17% to roughly 9.8% by 2019.
However, recent data show a concerning reversal. The Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2025 found that wasting among children under five has climbed to 12.5%, up from 9.8%, indicating a steep rise in acute malnutrition. Nutritional health is heavily dependent on surveillance, growth monitoring, and optimal feeding practices, such as exclusive breastfeeding for infants up to six months of age. Worryingly, exclusive breastfeeding, a critical health practice, has declined by 12% in recent years.
