Patients receive treatment during a measles outbreak as family members sit beside them in an overcrowded hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last month.Mahmud Hossain Opu/The Associated Press
Abdullah Al Imran is a Bangladeshi-born investigative journalist and author based in Canada.
It is still fresh in my memory. Soon after my younger brother was born, my mother walked across the school field near our house in Khulna to get him vaccinated. Long lines formed – small children, under a canopy, each with a parent. Nobody had to explain how deadly measles could be.
This memory came back this year as Canada – where my only son, now three and a half, was born and where we now call home – works to regain the measles elimination status it lost last November, amid a global outbreak.
Bangladesh, where I was born and raised, is in the middle of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called the world’s worst measles outbreak. More than 200,000 suspected cases have been reported, and by Sept. 29, the death toll of confirmed and suspected cases had reached 1,177.
That number hit me hard. I never imagined measles would touch both chapters of my life. Each digit in that toll was a child who didn’t have to die, and it devastated me, because Bangladesh had spent decades building an immunization system that protected generations of children.
So what went wrong?
Political upheaval in 2024 and 2025 strained Bangladesh’s already fragile health system and delayed routine childhood vaccines. Following the ouster of then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August, 2024, the interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus halted the country’s long-standing vaccine procurement through UNICEF for an open-tender system, according to an investigation by Science. UNICEF warned that delays would cause stockouts, outbreaks and deaths.
In the face of widespread anger, Bangladesh’s newly elected government, led by Tarique Rahman, launched an emergency vaccination campaign on April 5 this year with support from UNICEF, WHO and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance; by late June, more than 18.4 million children had been vaccinated.
A woman carries a child as she leaves the measles isolation ward at Shahid Shamsuddin Ahmed Hospital in Sylhet, Bangladesh.Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters
Bangladesh is not alone. We are witnessing a catastrophic global resurgence of preventable disease. According to the latest global data, severe, disruptive measles outbreaks hit 57 countries last year due to declining immunization rates. In the first half of this year, the largest outbreaks swept through nations like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Guatemala, India, Yemen, Pakistan, and Mexico. In the United States, this is officially the worst year for measles since 1991, while across the Americas as a whole, confirmed cases have already skyrocketed to nearly five times last year’s total.
I know – these countries have little in common and their outbreaks are not directly linked. But together they carry a clear message: Measles finds immunity gaps in rich and poor countries alike, for entirely different reasons. In some places the vaccine never arrives. In others, it is available but goes unused because of hesitancy, misinformation or complacency.
“Unvaccinated” is an observation, not an explanation. Whatever the cause, measles exploits the same weakness, and Canada is the proof that wealth is no shield. It eliminated endemic measles in 1998, yet recorded 5,425 cases in 2025 and another 1,121 by early September this year. Here in Ontario, public health units have issued exposure alerts spanning transit hubs, hospitals and emergency rooms, as officials work to contain a virus that keeps arriving from abroad.
Why should a country that just lost its status help others?
Canada now knows the cost of losing ground, but it also knows what it takes to succeed – strong surveillance, expert researchers, and a National Microbiology Laboratory capable of tracking the virus. That mix of hard-won experience and expertise is precisely what other countries need in a partner.
Canada’s first job is to regain elimination status, and that work is under way through catch-up immunization, targeted vaccination and more sensitive surveillance. But it shouldn’t stop at the border. Canada has already pledged $675-million dollars to Gavi for 2026 to 2030 – and Ottawa should keep measles a clear priority within that funding and offer the National Microbiology Laboratory’s expertise to strengthen surveillance in countries like Bangladesh. That help is modest against the cost of an outbreak, at home or abroad.
The response won’t look the same everywhere. Where vaccines are scarce, a steady supply comes first. Where trust is low, communication matters most. But everywhere, the task is to find the unprotected before measles does.
I began this piece grieving for children in the country of my birth. I’m ending it worried about the same disease reaching the country where my son was born.
Canada knows how to eliminate measles. As it works to do so once again, it can help others turn back the same threat and turn a national setback into a global contribution.