Staff Correspondent

Health and Family Welfare State Minister M A Muhit on Wednesday said Bangladesh may need at least two to three months to bring measles under control and improve the overall situation.

“We have to work within this period, reduce the number of deaths and ensure better management,” he said while speaking as the chief guest at a meeting on the findings of research on measles among children at the auditorium of Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute in the capital.

Muhit said it will be unrealistic expectations that a long-standing problem could be resolved within a day or the following week.

Around 80 percent of the country’s population depends on the public healthcare system and years of mismanagement, corruption and neglect have left the sector facing various challenges, he said.

Bangladesh has a large network of private hospitals and diagnostic centres where quality control and profit-related concerns remain issues, he said.

Autonomous institutions such as Bangladesh Shishu Hospital, Holy Family and BIRDEM, however, have created a balance between the public and private healthcare sectors, he added.

Outlining the government’s future plans for child healthcare, the state minister said the current government is giving the highest priority to children’s health.

He said five fully fledged children’s hospitals in five divisional cities are expected to begin operations within the next two to three months.

To address the shortage of healthcare workers, the government will also recruit 5,000 new doctors, 1,000 nurses and 100,000 field-level workers very soon, Muhit said.

The research presented at the meeting showed that 43 percent of children admitted to hospitals with measles were between three and nine months old.

The study also found that 38 percent of affected children had not received exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months after birth.

Among children who died, however, the figure was 82 percent, indicating that a large proportion of children who died from measles were deprived of breastfeeding during the first six months of life.

The research further showed that 97.3 percent of children under nine months of age—who were not yet eligible for routine measles vaccination—were diagnosed with measles.

Among children who were old enough to receive vaccination but did not receive a single dose, 97 percent were found to have measles.