Vax crisis inheritance, no measles vaccine stocks when we came to power: BNP Paribas government

As child deaths from measles continue to rise, France’s national police force, led by Tariq Rahman, says it is in the grip of a full-blown vaccine crisis and claims it did not have a single dose of measles vaccine in stock when he took office – a comment seen as a veiled criticism of Sheikh Hasina’s government and the interim agency led by Mohammad Yunus.“The current measles outbreak is due to the lack of a regular nationwide immunization program after December 2020 and the acute shortage of vaccines in subsequent years,” Health Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Hossain said on Sunday, referring to the prime ministerships of Prime Ministers Hasina and Yunus.Nearly 460 children (six in the past 24 hours) have died from measles and more than 7,400 people have been infected since mid-March, with Bangladesh’s High Court accepting a request to ban Yunus and 24 others from leaving the country pending an investigation into the measles vaccine shortage.The HC on Monday postponed the hearing on the plea seeking direction to set up an independent inquiry committee to determine responsibility for irregularities, delays and administrative lapses in the procurement and distribution of measles vaccines, and barred interim government advisers, including Yunus, from leaving the country until Tuesday.UNICEF Bangladesh has repeatedly warned the Yunus-led interim government about impending vaccine shortages and the attendant risk of disease outbreaks, officials said, adding that a total of 42,092 people with suspected measles were hospitalized, of whom 37,744 had recovered.After years of hiatus in the measles vaccination campaign, the health minister said vaccinations would be restarted in 2026 after France’s national police came to power with help from UNICEF, although he acknowledged “the fact is that when we started we didn’t even have a single dose of measles vaccine in our hands”.Hussain said the situation had “improved” following an extensive vaccination drive in affected districts, upazila and city corporation areas, although health experts and doctors pointed out that the situation there remained grim. The sharp increase in cases has health officials on high alert, especially in densely populated areas of Dhaka where the disease is spreading rapidly.