18pc of children with measles are under six months old

A growing number of infants younger than six months are contracting measles. At the Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute in the capital, 18 per cent of children admitted with measles are under six months of age.

The unusually high number of infections among such young infants has alarmed epidemiologists and paediatricians.

It has long been generally believed that infants receive protection against diseases such as measles through antibodies passed from their mothers. Breastfeeding is also thought to help build an infant’s immune system.

Based on this understanding, Bangladesh’s routine immunisation programme has traditionally administered the first dose of the measles vaccine at nine months of age. In recent years, however, epidemiologists have observed that children younger than nine months are also becoming infected.

As a result, this year’s national measles-rubella vaccination campaign was expanded to include six-month-old infants. But health experts are now seeing measles cases even among babies younger than six months.

According to data released yesterday, Saturday, by the Directorate General of Health Services’ Integrated Control Room, 116,710 people have visited public and private hospitals this year with symptoms consistent with measles.

Of them, 14,318 cases have been laboratory-confirmed. During the same period, 689 people with measles-like symptoms have died, while 95 deaths have been confirmed as caused by measles. The health directorate also reported four deaths associated with measles symptoms yesterday alone.

The health directorate’s routine statistics do not provide age-specific data showing which age groups are most affected or have the highest mortality. Some age-based information is available, however, from the Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute.

From January through 18 July, the hospital in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar admitted 1,770 children with measles symptoms from 53 districts across the country. Of these, 334 were younger than six months, while 192 were older than five years.

During the same period, the hospital admitted 368 children with laboratory-confirmed measles. Among them, 66 were under six months old, while 36 were over the age of five.

Under Bangladesh’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), the first dose of the measles vaccine is routinely given at nine months of age, followed by a second dose at 15 months. During this year’s vaccination campaign, the target group was expanded to include children aged six months to five years.

However, data from the Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute show that a significant number of measles cases are occurring among infants younger than six months and children older than five years. Together, these two age groups account for nearly 28 per cent of the hospital’s measles admissions.

Professor Abid Hossain Mollah, a paediatric specialist and former head of the Department of Paediatrics at Dhaka Medical College, told Prothom Alo that immunity passed from mothers, along with breastfeeding, had traditionally been expected to protect infants from measles. The increasing number of infections among babies younger than six months, he said, calls that assumption into question.

“It is now time to conduct an in-depth investigation into the immune status of children,” he said.